Current potentials and challenges using Sentinel-1 for broadacre field remote sensing

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potentials and challenges of using Sentinel-1 SAR data for monitoring broadacre fields, providing a methodology to make the data more accessible for agricultural research and demonstrating its application with Danish case studies.

Contribution

The paper introduces a methodology to translate Sentinel-1 data into a more accessible format for agricultural research and provides a service for local condition monitoring.

Findings

Sentinel-1 data can effectively monitor broadacre field conditions.

The proposed methodology improves data accessibility for researchers.

Application examples demonstrate practical use in Danish agriculture.

Abstract

ESA operates the Sentinel-1 satellites, which provides Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data of Earth. Recorded Sentinel-1 data have shown a potential for remotely observing and monitoring local conditions on broad acre fields. Remote sensing using Sentinel-1 have the potential to provide daily updates on the current conditions in the individual fields and at the same time give an overview of the agricultural areas in the region. Research depends on the ability of independent validation of the presented results. In the case of the Sentinel-1 satellites, every researcher has access to the same base dataset, and therefore independent validation is possible. Well documented research performed with Sentinel-1 allow other research the ability to redo the experiments and either validate or falsify presented findings. Based on current state-of-art research we have chosen to provide a service for researchers in the agricultural domain. The service allows researchers the ability to monitor local conditions by using the Sentinel-1 information combined with a priori knowledge from broad acre fields. Correlating processed Sentinel-1 to the actual conditions is still a task the individual researchers must perform to benefit from the service. In this paper, we presented our methodology in translating sentinel-1 data to a level that is more accessible to researchers in the agricultural field. The goal here was to make the data more easily available, so the primary focus can be on correlating and comparing to measurements collected in the broadacre fields. We illustrate the value of the service with three examples of the possible application areas. The presented application examples are all based on Denmark, where we have processed all sentinel-1 scan from since 2016.