SUGARCANE PLANTATION MAPPING USING DYNAMIC TIME WARPING FROM MULTI-TEMPORAL SENTINEL-1A RADAR IMAGES

Abstract. Updating of seasonal agricultural crop map is limited by the local knowledge of the mapper. Mapping of previously unaccounted agricultural plots involve massive field works aided by very high-resolution images. The phenological cycle of seasonal crops like sugarcane, with a range of ten (10) to twelve (12) months from planting to harvesting, exhibit a unique characteristic in terms of radar backscatter and time. In this paper, a pattern matching algorithm was tested to detect sugarcane plantations. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), which was originally used for voice recognition, was used to detect sugarcane plantations from multitemporal Sentinel-1A images. Using known sugarcane plots, temporal signatures were gathered and used to detect other plantations in the area. The result helped the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) in updating the inventory of sugarcane plantations faster with detection accuracy of more than 92 percent.