Efficiency estimation of different satellite data usage for winter wheat yield forecasting in Ukraine

In this paper, we focus on assessing efficiency of using different satellite-derived parameters (biophysical variables), such as NDVI, FAPAPR, and VHI, for crop yield forecasting for Ukraine. The main objective of this study is to select the optimal parameters using a rigorous feature selection procedure based on random forest and cross validation. Empirical models incorporating different parameters are built, and used in the operational framework. The forecasts that are available 2-3 months prior harvest are compared to official statistics for the years 2011-2013.