ON IDENTIFYING REQUIREMENTS FOR EARTH REMOTE SENSING DATA TO RESOLVE AGRICULTURAL AND FORESTRY TASKS

Abstract

The current stage of development in spaceborne Earth remote sensing (ERS) is characterized by the expanding use of ERS data and the improvement of observation systems. Therefore, an important task in designing a promising satellite ERS system is to identify the current requirements for data characteristics: the spatial resolution, imaging frequency, and swath width. This article identifies the requirements for ERS data characteristics necessary to address a wide range of agricultural and forestry tasks. Based on an analysis of the relevant scientific literature, tasks addressed using ERS were listed and divided into six groups of agricultural tasks (mapping and classification, crop and soil/water resource monitoring, forecasting and planning, precision control, regulatory policy oversight, and economic and insurance tasks) and six groups of forestry tasks (forest inventory, forest condition and dynamics monitoring, forest exploitation control, firefighting, scientific research, and planning support). For each group, peer-reviewed scientific publications were selected, which contain specific quantitative requirements for the ERS data characteristics. Based thereon, requirements were identified for optical, thermal, and radar spaceborne imagery. It was shown that, for the overwhelming majority of agricultural and forestry tasks to be resolved, it is sufficient to use optical data with a spatial resolution of 2 to 3 m and a temporal resolution of 2 to 3 days, radar data with a spatial resolution of 3 to 5 m and a temporal resolution of 3 to 6 days, and thermal imagery with a spatial resolution of 20 m and a temporal resolution of 3 to 5 days. The most stringent requirements for spatial resolution are imposed in tasks of early detection of weeds and plant pests. Fighting forest fires requires the highest temporal resolution of thermal imaging: 15 to 30 minutes.

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