USING NOAA AVHRR AND LANDSAT TM TO ESTIMATE RICE AREA YEAR-BY-YEAR

Remote sensing has been widely used to estimate crop area and producti on. Forecasting the crop area year-by-year is the key step to realizin g crop production forecasting. In this letter, a methodology to calcul ate rice area using NOAA AVHRR and Landsat TM data is introduced. The rice area in 1992 was estimated using Landsat TM data. 'Rice' pixels i n 1992 and 1994 were calculated and the rice area change trend determi ned 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 T eam(AIT) of Hubei province. The same method was applied to estimate th e rice area of 1995. The accuracy was 91.6 per cent compared with AIT data.