Research: Monitoring Abandoned Agriculture, Fallow Fields, and Grasslands with Landsat and Sentinel-2 (LCLUC)

Our main goal is to monitor abandoned agriculture, fallow fields, and grasslands with combined satellite images from Landsat and Sentinel-2. Our objectives are: 1) Analyze Landsat and Sentinel-2 data from single years to classify active agriculture, hayfields, and both non-woody and woody herbaceous cover; 2) analyze Landsat data from multiple years to classify a) non-woody herbaceous cover into non-woody abandoned agriculture, fallow fields, and grasslands, b) woody herbaceous cover into woody abandoned agriculture and permanent grasslands, and c) active agriculture in permanent agriculture and areas that were re-cultivated; 3) conduct a rigorous accuracy assessment and uncertainty analyses, and evaluate the robustness of the developed algorithms and their potential for operational use in the future, and 4) explore the effects of a) temperature data from TIRS, b) texture information, and c) fire detection on the mapping accuracy of abandoned agriculture.