Remote sensing of rice crop areas

Abstract Rice means life for millions of people and it is planted in many regions of the world. It primarily grows in the major river deltas of Asia and Southeast Asia, such as the Mekong Delta, known as the Rice Bowl of Vietnam, the second-largest rice-producing nation on Earth. However, Latin America, the USA, and Australia have extensive rice-growing regions. In addition, rice is the most rapidly growing source of food in Africa. Rice is therefore of significant importance to food security in an increasing number of low-income food-deficit countries. This review article gives a complementary overview of how remote sensing can support the assessment of paddy rice cultivation worldwide. This article presents and discusses methods for rice mapping and monitoring, differentiating between the results achievable using different sensors of various spectral characteristics and spatial resolution. The remote sensing of rice-growing areas can not only contribute to the precise mapping of rice areas and the assessment of the dynamics in rice-growing regions, but can also contribute to harvest prediction modelling, the analyses of plant diseases, the assessment of rice-based greenhouse gas (methane) emission due to vegetation submersion, the investigation of erosion-control-adapted agricultural systems, and the assessment of ecosystem services in rice-growing areas. Acknowledgements The critical comments of Dr Lam Dao Nguyen helped to improve this article. The authors also thank Paul Schumacher for support with figures and editing. This work has been carried out in the context of the WISDOM project (Water related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta), which is funded by the German Ministry of Science and Education, BMBF.