Self-adapting extraction of cropland phenological transitions of rotation agroecosystems using dynamically fused NDVI images

Remote sensing can be used to monitor cropland phenological characteristics; however, tradeoffs between the spatial and temporal resolutions of cloudless satellite images limit the accuracy of their retrieval. In this study, an improved enhanced spatial and temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (ESTARFM) was applied to human-dominated Xiong’an New Area to develop a self-adapting algorithm automating the extraction of main phenological transition points (greenup, maturity, senescence, and dormancy). The analyses of cropland phenological characteristics were performed utilizing the Softmax classification method. By examining three different phases of fusion images, it was found that the improved ESTARFM was more accurate than the original ESTARFM (correlation coefficient > 0.76; relative root mean square error 0.79). The reconstructed normalized difference vegetation indexes were consistent with that acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (average discrepancy: 0.1136, median absolute deviation: 0.0110). The greenup, maturity, senescence, and dormancy points were monitored in 5-day resolution and 50-day length on a 30-m grid scale, and their average day of year (DOY) were 67, 119, 127, and 166 for wheat; 173, 224, 232, and 283 for single-season corn; and 189, 227, 232, and 285 for rotation corn, respectively. The corresponding median absolute deviations were 2, 3, 2, and 2 days for wheat; 2, 5, 3, and 4 days for single-season corn; and 2, 5, 2, and 2 days for rotation corn, respectively, while all coefficients of variation did not exceed 6%. The proposed self-adapting approach can be used for identifying the planting modes at grid level in rotation agroecosystems and cropland phenological dynamics on a global or regional scale.