ESTIMATING CROP COVER FRACTION FROM DIGITAL COLOR IMAGES

Abstract. The use of automated methods to estimate crop cover fraction from digital color images has increased in recent years. Crop cover fraction can determine accurate, fast and inexpensive with this methods. A digital color images was acquired over each of the 30 sample fields in 2014 year at 2–3 week intervals. Study area has 15 sunflower fields and 15 corn fields. Digital color images were collected during 4 months, namely over the course of the growing season from sowing until harvesting to determine crop cover fraction. We used two approach to estimate crop cover fraction. In first method, the images were transformed from the RGB (red, green, blue) color space to the HSI (hue, intensity, saturation) color space. We used an object-based image analysis approach to classify the images into green vegetation and the other materials. In the second method, The Green Crop Tracker is less labor and time intensive than the object-based classification approach, is a viable alternative to ground-based methods. By comparing object-based classification method and Green Crop Tracker software 2014 growing season, results were obtained: There were high correlations between the estimations obtained by object-based classification method and Green Crop Tracker software (for 2014 R² = 0.89). The relationship between two methods for 2014-23 sunflower field was calculated R² = 0.97.