Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery

Grasslands are important for their ecological values and for agricultural activities such as livestock production worldwide. Efficient grassland management is vital to these values and activities, and remote sensing technologies are increasingly being used to characterize the spatiotemporal variatio...

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Main Authors: Tom Hardy, Lammert Kooistra, Marston Domingues Franceschini, Sebastiaan Richter, Erwin Vonk, Gé van den Eertwegh, Dion van Deijl
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
Series:AgriEngineering
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2624-7402/3/1/8
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spelling doaj-de1515ab23a54a5fa42a7ec8badbac942021-03-17T00:06:47ZengMDPI AGAgriEngineering2624-74022021-03-013811813710.3390/agriengineering3010008Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 ImageryTom Hardy0Lammert Kooistra1Marston Domingues Franceschini2Sebastiaan Richter3Erwin Vonk4Gé van den Eertwegh5Dion van Deijl6Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The NetherlandsLaboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The NetherlandsLaboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The NetherlandsVersuchs- und Bildungszentrum Landwirtschaft Haus Riswick, Elsenpass 5, 47533 Kleve, GermanyStellaSpark, Furkabaan 60, 3524 ZK Utrecht, The NetherlandsKnowH2O, Watertorenweg 12, 6571 CB Berg en Dal, The NetherlandsKnowH2O, Watertorenweg 12, 6571 CB Berg en Dal, The NetherlandsGrasslands are important for their ecological values and for agricultural activities such as livestock production worldwide. Efficient grassland management is vital to these values and activities, and remote sensing technologies are increasingly being used to characterize the spatiotemporal variation of grasslands to support those management practices. For this study, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery was used as an input to develop an open-source and automated monitoring system (Sen2Grass) to gain field-specific grassland information on the national and regional level for any given time range as of January 2016. This system was implemented in a cloud-computing platform (StellaSpark Nexus) designed to process large geospatial data streams from a variety of sources and was tested for a number of parcels from the Haus Riswick experimental farm in Germany. Despite outliers due to fluctuating weather conditions, vegetation index time series suggested four distinct growing cycles per growing season. Established relationships between vegetation indices and grassland yield showed poor to moderate positive trends, implying that vegetation indices could be a potential predictor for grassland biomass and chlorophyll content. However, the inclusion of larger and additional datasets such as Sentinel-1 imagery could be beneficial to developing more robust prediction models and for automatic detection of mowing events for grasslands.https://www.mdpi.com/2624-7402/3/1/8sen2grasssentinel-2stellasparknexusgrassland monitoringtime series
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Tom Hardy
Lammert Kooistra
Marston Domingues Franceschini
Sebastiaan Richter
Erwin Vonk
Gé van den Eertwegh
Dion van Deijl
spellingShingle Tom Hardy
Lammert Kooistra
Marston Domingues Franceschini
Sebastiaan Richter
Erwin Vonk
Gé van den Eertwegh
Dion van Deijl
Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
AgriEngineering
sen2grass
sentinel-2
stellaspark
nexus
grassland monitoring
time series
author_facet Tom Hardy
Lammert Kooistra
Marston Domingues Franceschini
Sebastiaan Richter
Erwin Vonk
Gé van den Eertwegh
Dion van Deijl
author_sort Tom Hardy
title Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
title_short Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
title_full Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
title_fullStr Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
title_full_unstemmed Sen2Grass: A Cloud-Based Solution to Generate Field-Specific Grassland Information Derived from Sentinel-2 Imagery
title_sort sen2grass: a cloud-based solution to generate field-specific grassland information derived from sentinel-2 imagery
publisher MDPI AG
series AgriEngineering
issn 2624-7402
publishDate 2021-03-01
description Grasslands are important for their ecological values and for agricultural activities such as livestock production worldwide. Efficient grassland management is vital to these values and activities, and remote sensing technologies are increasingly being used to characterize the spatiotemporal variation of grasslands to support those management practices. For this study, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery was used as an input to develop an open-source and automated monitoring system (Sen2Grass) to gain field-specific grassland information on the national and regional level for any given time range as of January 2016. This system was implemented in a cloud-computing platform (StellaSpark Nexus) designed to process large geospatial data streams from a variety of sources and was tested for a number of parcels from the Haus Riswick experimental farm in Germany. Despite outliers due to fluctuating weather conditions, vegetation index time series suggested four distinct growing cycles per growing season. Established relationships between vegetation indices and grassland yield showed poor to moderate positive trends, implying that vegetation indices could be a potential predictor for grassland biomass and chlorophyll content. However, the inclusion of larger and additional datasets such as Sentinel-1 imagery could be beneficial to developing more robust prediction models and for automatic detection of mowing events for grasslands.
topic sen2grass
sentinel-2
stellaspark
nexus
grassland monitoring
time series
url https://www.mdpi.com/2624-7402/3/1/8
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