Development of an earth observation processing chain for crop bio-physical parameters at local scale

This paper proposes a full Earth observation processing chaing for biophysical parameter estimation at local scales. In particular, we focus on the Leaf Area Index (LAI) as an essential climate variable required for the monitoring and modeling of land surfaces at local scale. The main goal of this study is tied to the use of optical satellite images to retrieve Earth Observation (EO) biophysical parameters able to describe the spatio-temporal changes in agro-ecosystems at local scale. The objective of this work is two-fold: (i) to set up and update the EO products processing chain at high resolution (local) scale; and (ii) derive multitemporal LAI maps at 30 m resolution to be fed into a crop model. The processing chain includes the combination of surface reflectance products from Landat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI. The results of the processing chain used and the retrieval approach are encouraging for crop monitoring at local scale.