Use of Remote Sensing Satellite Images in Rice Area Monitoring System of Bangladesh

In this work, we developed a satellite-based Boro rice monitoring system which will be capable of collecting data on rice production area of whole Bangladesh along with a graphical statistics of rice production area every season. In this monitoring system, Bangladesh has been divided into 7 regions and the production area of Boro rice for these 7 regions has been calculated using only the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite data. Our system does not require any ground truth data. The principal approach requires remotely detected information from MODIS at 250m250m spatial resolutions gained more than two distinct time periods: sowing season which is from December 1 to January 10 and growing season which is from January 11 to April 10 throughout the year (Boro Seasons). Total of eight years 2008–2015 MODIS data have been accumulated and an improvised Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) threshold of the Boro rice model has been used for rice area extraction. This monitoring system has some features like region-wise and area-wise information, search options, improvement/deterioration analysis, and rice area extraction map view. The rice monitoring system can be used by the Department of Agriculture of Bangladesh or Food ministry for the collection of accurate and up-to-date information on the country's rice production. It will also be able to provide information on Boro rice production readily accessible to decision-makers and government agencies to help respond better during and after natural disasters or in any need. Moreover, we believe that our developments of forecasting the Boro rice yield would be useful for the decision-makers in addressing food security in Bangladesh.

1. Introduction

Rice generation in Bangladesh is an essential piece of the national economy [1]. The prevailing nourishment harvest of Bangladesh is rice, representing around 75 percent of horticultural land use (and 28 percent of GDP) [1]. So it is very much important to build a system which monitors the rice because of improper management it could create a problem like food storage. Accurate and timely information is a vital necessity for taking any decision. So the accurate information of spatial distribution of rice fields is needed for annual production projections and management. However, most agricultural surveys rely mainly on statistics based on limited ground samplings at which data are extrapolated on a national scale. Although the census can provide statistical estimates, slow and unsystematic collection of data can limit the ability to make timely decisions. Moreover, rice agriculture is strongly linked to environmental issues, from water management to climate change. For these reasons, long term interannual monitoring is also required in order to study the production and cultural impacts of these factors. Satellite remote sensing can support this long term monitoring requirement at regional and global scales. Currently, there is no remote sensing satellite based rice monitoring system in Bangladesh. Still Bangladesh agriculture's data collection process is manual [2]. They accumulate rice production information from farmers and this information is arranged and checked each season. Every data is compared each year to see the adjustments in its production. This sort of checking is dull and exceptionally inclined to information mistakes. A rice monitoring system is very much necessary for determining the total rice production of our country. Main purpose of our Boro rice monitoring system (BRMS) is the projection of rice production of Bangladesh seasonally region wise using MODIS satellite images. BRMS shows the production area in a very user-friendly way and graphically. BRMS will be helpful for Bangladesh government to see the whole dataset in a single monitoring system. They will be able to see the production changes from year to year through this system. The system have some user-friendly features which will help the user to monitor the Boro rice production of Bangladesh.