Identifying the areas and their extent of cultivated crops is essential at both the national and local level for many areas of agricultural management and planning. For example crop maps may be used to help forecast yields, generate crop production statistics, and derive insight on irrigation water use. Conventional data collection methods such as census and ground surveying can be time consuming, costly and prone to inaccuracies from human errors.

To standardize measurements and classify large areas at reduced cost, remote sensing methods using satellite images provides important possibilities that can generate new data. Through these methods it is possible to identify different crop types as each reflects and absorbs radiation in different ways as plants develop at different times of the year, their leaf structures are variable, with additional variations found with changes in moisture content and crop health.

The MAWRED team have run a number of crop mapping courses and the exercises and supporting material and video is given.

• Exercise 1 (English)