Monitoring of Winter soil cover and Catch crops
The use case focuses on monitoring winter soil cover and catch crops to ensure compliance with eco-scheme regulations, using satellite data for accurate detection. The approach relies on NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and radar coherence data from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, along with some Landsat data. NDVI tracks vegetation cover, while radar coherence becomes particularly valuable in winter, where cloud cover and moisture can interfere with optical data.
The objective is to ensure that at least 80% of agricultural parcels are covered by crops during key periods—by December 1st for under-sowing and between January 1st and March 1st for green cover. One of the main challenges is ensuring accurate detection during winter, where cloud cover and wet soils can distort NDVI readings. The combination of NDVI with radar coherence improves detection reliability in these difficult conditions.
The results showed that a majority of parcels met the eco-scheme compliance requirements. However, fewer parcels reached the 80% crop coverage threshold when evaluated with the NDVI criterion, largely due to winter conditions affecting data quality. By integrating NDVI and radar coherence data, the overall accuracy of monitoring was significantly improved, making it possible to assess crop coverage more reliably even in unfavorable weather conditions. This highlights the value of combining data sources to meet eco-scheme monitoring needs, though additional improvements are required to address the limitations posed by winter data challenges.
Example of the analysis applied on NDVI temporal profiles as a part of identification of catch crop occurrence and winter soil cover.