Acquisition of paddy rice coverage based on multi-temporal IRS-P6 satellite AWiFS RS-data

Paddy rice is the first main crop in China. Acquiring paddy rice coverage exactly plays a practical and significant role to the nation. And for the purpose of acquiring paddy rice coverage exactly, IRS-P6 satellite data are excellent middle spatial resolution data which have an extensive application in crop coverage estimation. But its application of acquiring crop coverage still needs verifying. This paper takes China typical paddy rice field, Huaiyuan county, Anhui Province, as the study area. Paddy rice coverage has been acquired based on two significant phynology's IRS-P6 satellite' AWiFS RS-data which are respectively achieved on Jun. 24th and Sept. 9th in 2005. First, respectively the two data were classified, and then the paddy rice coverage was divisionally acquired, finally, the subarea's results were combined together as the final result. By comparing with the result based on high spatial resolution data, the overall pixel accuracy of paddy rice coverage is 88.58% and regional total accordance of paddy rice coverage is 97.63%, which is a little lower than that of high resolution result. Three important advancements have been found from the process of acquiring paddy rice coverage: 1) The very exact paddy rice coverage can be easily obtained by significant phynology's Multi-temporal IRS-P6 Satellite AWiFS RS-data through divisional acquiring method. 2) Paddy rice coverage could be acquired very exactly by using IRS-P6 satellite AWiFS RS-data on paddy rice near maturity; 3) IRS-P6 satellite' AWiFS RS-data have a great potential in the application of crop coverage measurement.