Using NOAA AVHRR and Landsat TM to estimate rice area year-by-year

Remote sensing has been widely used to estimate crop area and production. Forecasting the crop area year-by-year is the key step to realizing crop production forecasting. In this letter, a methodology to calculate rice area using NOAA AVHRR and Landsat TM data is introduced. The rice area in 1992 was estimated using Landsat TM data. 'Rice' pixels in 1992 and 1994 were calculated and the rice area change trend determined using NOAA AVHRR data for the two years. With a linear statistical model, the rice area of 1994 was forecast. Its accuracy was 84.5 per cent compared to the data released by the Agricultural Investigation Team(AIT) of Hubei province. The same method was applied to estimate the rice area of 1995. The accuracy was 91.6 per cent compared with AIT data.