Protected horticultural crops characterization through object-based image analysis and satellite imagery time series in Almería (Spain)

Abstract

Greenhouse farming is an agricultural management system that has showed its efficiency in intensifying food production. The importance of agriculture in the sustainable management of natural resources requires the development of op-erational methodologies for mapping and monitoring farmland. This study aims to analyze the potential of time series of Sentinel-2 images for monitoring Plastic Cov-ered Greenhouse (PCG) crops in Almería (Spain). For this, a set of 22 Sentinel-2 images taken during 2021 were used. Throughout the year 2021, monthly field visits were made on 32 PCG to know the characteristics of these greenhouses, the crops they contained (i.e., tomato, pepper, cucumber, melon and watermelon) and their evolution over time. By combining both the satellite and the field data, the crops, which are growing into each PCG, can be characterized. Two different spectral in-dices, NDVI (related to vegetative growth) and Brightness (related to the white-washing of PCG), derived from the Sentinel-2 images shown their usefulness for differentiating crops growing under plastic sheet. This work could be the first step for discriminating crops through indices derived from Sentinel-2 images for the de-velopment of future management strategies for PCG areas.