Synergy of optical and synthetic aperture radar data for early-stage crop yield estimation: a case study over a state of Germany

Traditional crop cutting experiment-based yield estimation method captures the regional yield variability but lacks field-level information. Satellite images hold enormous crop information at finer spatial resolution. Crop yield mapping with optical images is particularly challenging if cloud-free images are unavailable during the crucial crop developmental stages. All-weather availability and sensitivity to crop structure, dielectric properties make synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images an excellent resource for yield estimation. Both types of data provide complementary information about crop conditions. A random forest regression model with genetic algorithm-based feature selection is developed to exploit the Sentinel-2 optical and Sentinel-1 SAR images for yield estimation. We utilized the crop harvest and quality survey (BEE) yield data set collected by the Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt (HSL), Wiesbaden, Germany, over 490 fields. We prepared 20 m resolution yield maps for winter wheat, winter barley, winter rye and winter rapeseed. Input features for the yield estimation model are selected based on the prior knowledge of remote sensing of vegetation. Baseline random forest regression models are developed for all the four crop types with optical and SAR input features. An optimized random forest regression model with genetic algorithm-based feature selection results in performance improvement. Dissimilarity in genetic algorithm selected image features highlights the significance of crop-specific feature selection for yield estimation. The optimized models reliably estimate yield by achieving correlation coefficient (r) of 0.65–0.86, mean absolute error 0.93–1.16 t ha–1 and root mean square error 1.12–1.56 t ha–1 with BEE yield on testing data set. The proposed models could estimate the intra-field yield variation when winter wheat, winter barley, winter rye were in the shooting phase to the beginning of ear-shifting, and winter rapeseed began to flower or was already flowering. These results demonstrate the merits of our model for early-stage crop yield estimation at the field level with mono-temporal image and adaptability for the cropping season with high cloud cover.