Application of nanosatellites PlanetScope data to monitor crop growth

Abstract

In this research, an approach to monitor crop growth and development is presented using time series satellite data of high spatial resolution. Monitoring of winter wheat phenology based on images of PlanetScope constellations is considered. By applying various PlanetScope data processing types and ground based GreenSeeker data, differences of NDVI values at two variants of crop fertilization are determined. In particular, the following approaches were used in the research: obtaining the Top of Atmosphere Reflectance (TOA), the Planet Surface Reflectance (SR), and receiving NDVI image in Python using a Rasterio module. It was estimated that NDVI values derived from the surface reflectance imagery were significantly correlated to the ground data of a manual active GreenSeeker optical sensor (p < 0.05). The proposed simplified technique, based on PlanetScope NDVI time series, demonstrates the possibilities to monitor temporal changes in crop growth.