Remote sensing as an aid to Tasmanian horticultural crop recording and husbandry

Reports on the identification, from sequential satellite imagery, of a broad range of the crops grown under irrigation in Tasmania, with the primary aim of contributing to cost-effective, industry-wide, medium-term recording of crop location. Sequential satellite data were acquired from two irrigated farming areas in Tasmania during 1997 and 1998 via SPOT 2/3, SPOT 4 and Landsat 5 TM. The results of the work have shown that up to 80 percent of a wide range of crop types, plus fallow ground, can be simultaneously correctly identified, using a custom written computer program. The onion crop was most easily recognised, with peas, potatoes, poppies and pyrethrum also returning good accuracy in the analyses, particularly in the second year. Some individual crops were identified with 90-95% accuracy