CROP PHENOLOGY ESTIMATION AND TRACKING WITH REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY

Techniques for estimating crop maturity using remote sensing imagery are disclosed. A method may include a step of providing a remote sensing image of crops acquired at an image acquisition time, for example, a synthetic aperture radar image acquired from a satellite. The method may also include a step of predicting a maturity level of the crops at the image acquisition time based on input crop maturity data from an input time and weather-based growth indication data from between the input time and the image acquisition time. The weather-based growth indication data may include growing degree day data. The method may further include a step of updating the predicted maturity level to an updated maturity level of the crops based on the remote sensing image and a response model relating remote sensing image information to crop maturity information. The predicting and updating steps may involve performing a particle filtering operation.