Monitoring rice areas using LANDSAT MSS data

Abstract A specialized system to monitor the rice growing areas of New South Wales has been developed. The monitor has been run for 2 years with accurate and consistent results. The monitor system starts with a land-cover mask. Each image is classified and the result used to update the mask using agronomic criteria. The criteria can, and often will, be changed between the different phonological stages of the crop. The system, with incremental revision of a land-cover mask, is quite different in approach to that adopted in multi-temporal image classification as utilized in LACIE and AgRISTARS.