Rice area mapping and yield estimation for crop insurance in Leyte Province [Philippines]

The remote sensing-based information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging Economics (RIICE) project aims to develop a national rice information system that provides timely and accurate information on rice area production, yield estimates, and production losses due to calamities to address food security and crop insurance purposes. This project makes use of remote sensing imagery from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) platforms to generate reliable rice area maps and derives crop status information from the imagery as input to a crop growth simulation model (CGSM) to estimate yield. All image analysis is performed with MAPscape-RICE in a fully automatic way and yield estimation is performed with Oryza2000 CGSM. First, a rice extent map is generated based on 350 ENVISAT Wide Swath images (75-100m resolution) acquired between 2003 and 2010. This provides a national level baseline estimate of the physical rice extent. Second, the actual rice area is generated using high resolution (3 m) COSMO-SkyMed images acquired approximately every 16 days from June-October 2012 over the Province of Leyte. This provides a detailed rice area map for the season as well as information on the start of season and the crop status on a bi-monthly basis. Leaf Area Index (LAI) measurements from fieldwork conducted at selected sites on the same day as the satellite pass are correlated with the satellite imagery to generate LAI maps. Third, rice yield per barangay [village] and municipality is estimated using the CGSM with input data from SAR imagery (planting dates and LAI), weather stations, soil maps, fieldwork (crop management and variety). These yield estimates are being assessed by RIICE partners to develop a yield index which can later be made the triggering basis for an insurance product. Preliminary result of the project in Leyte shows a promising result.