Rice crop area estimation of an administrative division in China using remote sensing data

In crop production estimation using remotely sensed data, it is necessary to estimate the crop area and its yeild per unitarea in a particular administrative division. Two approaches were adopted: (1) the target image of the study area was cut with the administrative boundary, land cover/use classification was processed and crop identification and area calculation were carried out, (2) land cover/use classification was carried out first and then the study area was cut from the image with administrative boundary, and area was estimated. We call these two methods strategy A (cut and classify) and strategy B (classify and cut), respectively. In this paper, the two strategies were applied to rice crop area estimation. The results indicate that strategy B is better than strategy A in the unsupervized classification-cluster process and the rice crop area was estimated with an accuracy over 81% for semi-late rice and 90% for early rice.