Estimation of sowing dates at the village level: A probabilistic approach based on vegetation onset detections
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Marinho, Eduard; Vancutsem, Christelle; Fasbender, Dominique; Kayitakire, Francois; Pini, Giancarlo; Pekel, Jean-Francois
- Source
- 2012 First International Conference on Agro- Geoinformatics (Agro-Geoinformatics) Agro-Geoinformatics (Agro-Geoinformatics), 2012 First International Conference on. :1-6 Aug, 2012
- Subject
- Geoscience
Computing and Processing
Vegetation mapping
Estimation
Agriculture
MODIS
Soil
Time series analysis
Indexes
vegetation onset
sowing dates
statistics
Sahel
- Language
The length of the crop season is a major determinant of yields in Sahel. Based on green-up onset detection derived from MODIS time series, this paper proposes a new methodology for the estimation of the sowing dates. It builds upon a novel stochastic model that translates vegetation onset detections around villages into sowing probabilities. Results for Niger show that this approach outperforms the standard method adopted in the region based on rainfall thresholds.