Crop Growth Monitoring Based on the MODIS Data

Crop growth monitoring is very important in agriculture resource management. Crop growth monitoring could provide crop state information for the decisive maker and reflect variety information of crop yield in time. The index of crop growth monitoring has closely relation with crop yield, which could as early as forecast large-scale food state that possibility missing or surplus. Therefore, there are important meanings to the macro control for food. Traditionally, the monitoring of crop growth and yield forecasts are made on the basis of samples by field visits or written inquiries. On national scale, the processing of these sample data is an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Recent developments in remote sensing technologies have created promising opportunities for monitoring agricultural crop growth. The moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) is one detector board on Terra´s (EOS-AMI), which was lunched on December 18, 1999 by NASA. It offers a unique combination of spectral, temporal, and spatial resolution compared to previous global sensors, making it a good candidate for large-scale crop growth monitoring. The paper studied the method of crop growth monitoring based on data of MODIS/TERRA vegetation indices. Results from the study not only monitor the crop growth in investigation area, but also illustrate the powerful potential to provide information about crop growth based MODIS VI data.