MAPPING OF CROP-ROTATION USING MULTIDATE INDIAN REMOTE-SENSING SATELLITE DIGITAL DATA

Crop rotation is the sequential growth of crops in a year. The feasibi lity of deriving this information from multi-temporal satellite digita l data acquired during different crop seasons in a year is reported he rein. Red and NIR bands of the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) L ISS-I multidate data acquired in different crop seasons resulted in mo re than 95 percent accuracy of training site pixels. Similar result wa s also obtained using principal components of multidate data. Inclusio n of data acquired during the transitional phase of crop seasons was f ound to improve classification accuracy. Four-date data acquired betwe en October and March were found to be optimum for deriving such inform ation for West Bengal. The results showed that a rice based single cro pping system is the dominant rotation class of the district, while in the irrigation command area of Damodar river, a double cropping system of rice followed by rice and rice followed by potato were the major r otation classes.