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32 pages, 10956 KB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Variations and Environmental Evolution of Seaweed Cultivation Based on 41-Year Remote Sensing Data: A Case Study in the Dongtou Archipelago
by Bozhong Zhu, Yan Bai, Qiling Xie, Xianqiang He, Xiaoxue Sun, Xin Zhou, Teng Li, Zhihong Wang, Honghao Tang and Hanquan Yang
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(8), 1217; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18081217 - 17 Apr 2026
Abstract
The rapid expansion of seaweed aquaculture has profound impacts on coastal ecosystems, yet the lack of long-term, high-precision spatiotemporal monitoring methods has constrained systematic understanding of aquaculture dynamics and their environmental effects. This study integrated Landsat (1984–2025) and Sentinel-2 (2015–2025) imagery with an [...] Read more.
The rapid expansion of seaweed aquaculture has profound impacts on coastal ecosystems, yet the lack of long-term, high-precision spatiotemporal monitoring methods has constrained systematic understanding of aquaculture dynamics and their environmental effects. This study integrated Landsat (1984–2025) and Sentinel-2 (2015–2025) imagery with an attention-enhanced U-Net deep learning model to achieve 41 years of continuous monitoring of seaweed aquaculture in the Dongtou Archipelago, Zhejiang Province, China. The model achieved high extraction accuracy for both Landsat and Sentinel-2 aquaculture areas (F1 scores of 0.972 and 0.979, respectively). On this basis, the cultivation zones were further classified into Porphyra sp. and Sargassum fusiforme cultivation areas by incorporating local aquaculture planning and field survey data. Results showed that the aquaculture area underwent three developmental stages: slow initiation (1984–2000, <3 km2), rapid expansion (2001–2015, 3–8 km2), and high-level fluctuation (post-2015, typically 8–20 km2), reaching a peak of ~30 km2 during 2018–2019. Long-term retrieval of water quality parameters revealed that the decline in total suspended matter (from ~80 to 60 mg/L) and chlorophyll (from ~3 to 2 μg/L) within aquaculture zones was significantly greater than that in non-aquaculture areas, providing direct observational evidence for local water quality improvement by appropriately scaled aquaculture. Meanwhile, sea surface temperature showed a sustained increasing trend, with extremely high-temperature days (≥25 °C) exhibiting strong interannual variability, posing potential thermal stress risks to cold-preferring seaweed species. The NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and FAI (Floating Algae Index) indices effectively captured aquaculture phenology (seeding, growth, maturation, harvest), with their interannual peaks exhibiting an inverted U-shaped correlation with corresponding yields (R = 0.82 and 0.79, respectively, based on quadratic regression fitting), preliminarily demonstrating the potential of remote sensing in indicating density-dependent effects. This study systematically demonstrates the comprehensive capability of multi-source satellite remote sensing in long-term dynamic monitoring, environmental effect assessment, and yield relationship analysis of seaweed aquaculture, providing key technical support and scientific basis for aquaculture carrying capacity management and ecological risk prevention in island waters. Full article
45 pages, 27918 KB  
Article
Early Crop Type Classification Based on Seasonal Spectral Features and Machine Learning Methods
by Ainagul Alimagambetova, Moldir Yessenova, Assem Konyrkhanova, Ten Tatyana, Aliya Beissegul, Zhuldyz Tashenova, Kuanysh Kadirkulov, Aitimova Ulzada and Gulalem Mauina
Technologies 2026, 14(4), 221; https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies14040221 - 10 Apr 2026
Viewed by 388
Abstract
This paper explores the feasibility of early-season crop classification based on Sentinel-2-time series using the TimeSen2Crop dataset (≈1 million pixels, 16 crops). The aim of the study was to evaluate the spectral-phenological separability of crops during the season and compare the performance of [...] Read more.
This paper explores the feasibility of early-season crop classification based on Sentinel-2-time series using the TimeSen2Crop dataset (≈1 million pixels, 16 crops). The aim of the study was to evaluate the spectral-phenological separability of crops during the season and compare the performance of classical tabular algorithms, deep sequence models, and a seasonally oriented hybrid stacking scheme. Based on multispectral observations, a feature set was formed from 9 optical channels and 13 vegetation indices for 30 dates. F-criteria were calculated, confirming a sharp increase in interclass separability during the active vegetative growth phase and substantiating three time series truncation scenarios (early, early + mid-season, and full season). Random Forest (macro-F1: 0.46/0.74/0.75) was used as the base tabular model. LSTM, BiLSTM, GRU, 1D-CNN, and Transformer were trained in parallel, with Transformer showing the best results among the deep architectures (0.42/0.68/0.78). The main contribution of the work is a hybrid multi-layer stacking scheme combining heterogeneous base algorithms and OOF meta-features, which provides the highest quality (0.51/0.83/0.86) in all scenarios. The obtained results confirm the effectiveness of phenology-oriented selection of time windows, informative indices, and hybrid ensemble learning for improving the accuracy of early-season crop monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Information and Communication Technologies)
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22 pages, 22745 KB  
Article
Spectral Phenological Typologies for Improving Cross-Dataset in Mediterranean Winter Cereals
by Patricia Arizo-García, Sergio Castiñeira-Ibáñez, Beatriz Ricarte, Alberto San Bautista and Constanza Rubio
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(7), 3598; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16073598 - 7 Apr 2026
Viewed by 240
Abstract
Accurate monitoring of crop phenology is essential for precision agriculture and yield forecasting. However, satellite-derived time series often suffer from inherent noise, such as residual atmospheric effects and mixed pixels, as well as a frequent lack of ground-truth data in agriculture. In response, [...] Read more.
Accurate monitoring of crop phenology is essential for precision agriculture and yield forecasting. However, satellite-derived time series often suffer from inherent noise, such as residual atmospheric effects and mixed pixels, as well as a frequent lack of ground-truth data in agriculture. In response, this study proposes an algorithm to define the type of spectral signatures for the principal phenological stages of crops, using them as the foundation for training supervised machine learning classification models. The algorithm was developed using Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering to identify the spectral signature reference groups in winter wheat across the Burgos region (Spain) during the 2020 and 2021 growing seasons. To enhance cluster independence and biological coherence, a multi-step filtering process was implemented, including spectral purity (membership degree, SAM, and SAMder) and temporal coherence filters. The filtered and labeled dataset (80% original Burgos dataset) was used to train supervised classification models (KNN and XGBoost). The models’ reliability was verified through three wheat tests (remaining 20%), labeled using other clustering techniques, and an independent barley dataset from diverse geographic locations (Valladolid and Soria). The filtering process significantly improved cluster stability by removing outliers and transition spectral signatures. The supervised models demonstrated exceptional performance; the KNN model slightly outperformed XGB, achieving a mean Accuracy of 0.977, a Kappa of 0.967, and an F1-score of 0.977 in the wheat external test. Furthermore, the model showed, when applied to barley, that its phenological spectral signatures are equivalent in shape to those of wheat, with an Accuracy of 0.965 and an F1-score of 0.974. In addition, it was verified that the type spectral signatures remain the same regardless of the location. This study presents a robust classification tool capable of labeling four key phenological stages (tillering, stem elongation, ripening, and senescence) without ground truth. By effectively removing inherent satellite noise, the proposed methodology produces organized, cleaned datasets. This structured foundation is critical for future research integrating spectral signatures with harvester data to develop high-precision yield prediction models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Technologies in Smart Agriculture)
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20 pages, 2528 KB  
Article
Utilizing Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data and the CGAN to Identify Key Drought Factors Influencing Maize Across Distinct Phenological Stages
by Hui Zhao, Jifu Guo, Jing Jiang, Funian Zhao and Xiaoyang Yang
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1085; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071085 - 3 Apr 2026
Viewed by 326
Abstract
Drought is one of the major disasters constraining crop production. The accurate identification of the dominant environmental factors that drive drought stress at different growth stages of maize is essential for developing stage-specific and precise water management strategies, enhancing drought resistance, and ensuring [...] Read more.
Drought is one of the major disasters constraining crop production. The accurate identification of the dominant environmental factors that drive drought stress at different growth stages of maize is essential for developing stage-specific and precise water management strategies, enhancing drought resistance, and ensuring food security. However, a key challenge is quantifying the nonlinear interactions among multiple environmental factors. This study focuses on the rain-fed agricultural region of Northwest China. To address the limited availability of drought event samples in this region and the inadequacy of traditional statistical methods in capturing complex inter-factor relationships, we integrate a small-sample modeling framework based on an improved Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN) with an attribution framework that employs SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) for interpretability analysis. We incorporate ten environmental factors derived from multi-source remote sensing: temperature (Tmax, Tmin, Tmean), precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (ET), soil moisture at 0–10 cm (SM0–10) and at 10–40 cm (SM10–40), and solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIFmax, SIFmin, SIFmean). Sample sets were established for different maize phenological stages. The CGAN model was employed to achieve high-precision estimation of maize drought severity levels, while the SHAP method was used to quantitatively analyze the dominant factors and their contributions at each phenological stage. The results show that the CGAN model achieved coefficients of determination (R2) of 0.963, 0.972, and 0.979 for the seedling, jointing–tasseling, and maturity stages, respectively, demonstrating excellent nonlinear modeling capability under small samples. SHAP analysis reveals a clear dynamic evolution of dominant factors across phenological stages. Evapotranspiration (ET) dominated in the seedling stage, reflecting the primary role of surface water–heat balance, while the jointing–tasseling stage transitioned to a co-dominance of ET, topsoil moisture (SM0–10), and minimum SIF, indicating intensified crop transpiration and physiological stress under the meteorological drought framework, and the maturity stage shifted to an absolute dominance centered on mean temperature (Tmean), highlighting the critical impact of heat stress. This study provides a data-driven quantitative perspective for understanding maize drought mechanisms and offers a scientific basis for formulating differentiated drought management strategies for different growth stages. Furthermore, it demonstrates the potential of integrating CGAN with SHAP for agricultural remote sensing and drought attribution research in data-scarce regions. Full article
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19 pages, 2623 KB  
Article
Integrating Metabolomics, Physiology and Satellite Vegetation Indices to Characterize Dormancy Onset in Two Sweet Cherry Genotypes
by Gabriela M. Saavedra, Luciano Univaso, Laura Sepúlveda, José Gaete-Loyola, Carlos Nuñez, Victoria Lillo-Carmona, Valentina Castillo, Francisco Zambrano and Andrea Miyasaka Almeida
Horticulturae 2026, 12(4), 443; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae12040443 - 3 Apr 2026
Viewed by 395
Abstract
Perennial deciduous trees such as Prunus avium undergo seasonal transitions, culminating in bud dormancy establishment that involves coordinated physiological and metabolic adjustments. Dormancy monitoring in orchard systems still relies primarily on temperature-based models and forcing assays, which rarely incorporate physiological or biochemical indicators. [...] Read more.
Perennial deciduous trees such as Prunus avium undergo seasonal transitions, culminating in bud dormancy establishment that involves coordinated physiological and metabolic adjustments. Dormancy monitoring in orchard systems still relies primarily on temperature-based models and forcing assays, which rarely incorporate physiological or biochemical indicators. Here, we tested whether seasonal metabolic dynamics associated with dormancy progression differ between sweet cherry genotypes and whether these physiological differences are reflected in canopy-scale vegetation indices derived from satellite observations. Field measurements were conducted in two genotypes with contrasting chilling behavior (‘Regina’ and ‘210’) during the transition from vegetative growth to dormancy. Leaf gas exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence were monitored across the season, polar metabolites in floral buds were profiled by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and satellite-derived vegetation indices were used to characterize canopy dynamics. Dormancy progression was associated with declines in CO2 assimilation, transpiration, PSII photochemical efficiency, and electron transport rate, accompanied by increases in intercellular CO2 concentration and non-regulated energy dissipation. Metabolomic analysis revealed that genotype explained a larger proportion of metabolite variation than dormancy stage (PERMANOVA R2 = 0.483, p = 0.001), while principal component analysis accounted for 79.7% of total variance. Fructose showed the strongest genotype difference during paradormancy I, corresponding to an approximately 9.5-fold increase in ‘Regina’. Pathway enrichment analysis highlighted starch and sucrose metabolism and pyruvate metabolism as the most represented pathways during dormancy progression. Satellite-derived vegetation indices captured seasonal canopy decline and were significantly associated with several physiological variables. These results provide an integrated description of physiological and metabolic adjustments during dormancy establishment in sweet cherry and highlight the potential of combining metabolomics, plant physiology, and open-access satellite observations to monitor phenological transitions in orchard systems at scalable spatial and temporal resolutions. Full article
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38 pages, 1589 KB  
Review
Monitoring of Agricultural Crops by Remote Sensing in Central Europe: A Comprehensive Review
by Jitka Kumhálová, Jiří Sedlák, Jiří Marčan, Věra Vandírková, Petr Novotný, Matěj Kohútek and František Kumhála
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1075; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071075 - 3 Apr 2026
Viewed by 514
Abstract
Remote sensing has become a cornerstone of modern agricultural monitoring, addressing the dual challenges of increasing production while ensuring environmental sustainability. Based on a conceptual framework developed over the past decade, key application areas include yield estimation, phenology, stress assessment (e.g., drought), crop [...] Read more.
Remote sensing has become a cornerstone of modern agricultural monitoring, addressing the dual challenges of increasing production while ensuring environmental sustainability. Based on a conceptual framework developed over the past decade, key application areas include yield estimation, phenology, stress assessment (e.g., drought), crop mapping, and land-use change detection. In Central Europe, regionally specific conditions such as fragmented land ownership, small and irregular plots, and high climate variability shape these applications. Annual field crops, such as cereals, oilseeds, maize, and forage crops dominate production and represent the primary focus of monitoring efforts. Optical data from Sentinel-2 are effective for mapping crop types and analyzing phenology, especially when dense time series are available. However, persistent cloud cover during critical growth phases limits the effectiveness of optical approaches, prompting the integration of radar data from Sentinel-1. Multi-sensor strategies increase the robustness of classification and temporal continuity, supporting monitoring under adverse conditions. Reliable reference data from systems such as the Land Parcel Identification System enables parcel-level validation and facilitates object-oriented analyses in line with management needs. Future developments will increasingly rely on advanced time-series analysis, machine learning, and the integration of agrometeorological and crop model data. As climate change intensifies drought frequency and yield variability, remote sensing will play a pivotal role in enabling near-real-time monitoring and decision support within the evolving landscape of digital agriculture ecosystems. The aim of this review article is to provide an overview of crop monitoring in the Central European region over approximately the past fifteen years, emphasizing trends in subsequent technological and procedural developments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crop Yield Prediction Using Remote Sensing Techniques)
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33 pages, 2402 KB  
Review
Toward Advanced Sensing and Data-Driven Approaches for Maturity Assessment of Indeterminate Peanut Cropping Systems: Review of Current State and Prospects
by Sathish Raymond Emmanuel Sahayaraj, Abhilash K. Chandel, Pius Jjagwe, Ranadheer Reddy Vennam, Maria Balota and Arunachalam Manimozhian
Sensors 2026, 26(7), 2208; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26072208 - 2 Apr 2026
Viewed by 591
Abstract
Determining the optimal harvest time is among the most critical economic decisions for peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) growers, directly influencing yield, quality, and market value. Unlike many other crops, peanuts are indeterminate, continuing to flower and produce pods throughout their life cycle. [...] Read more.
Determining the optimal harvest time is among the most critical economic decisions for peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) growers, directly influencing yield, quality, and market value. Unlike many other crops, peanuts are indeterminate, continuing to flower and produce pods throughout their life cycle. As a result, pod development and maturation are asynchronous, making harvest timing particularly challenging. Conventional maturity estimation techniques, including the hull scrape method, pod blasting, and visual maturity profiling, are invasive, labor-intensive, time-consuming, and spatially limited. Moreover, differences in cultivar maturity rates and agroclimatic conditions exacerbate inconsistencies in maturity prediction. These challenges highlight the urgent need for scalable, objective, and data-driven methods to support growers in achieving optimal harvest outcomes. This review synthesizes the current understanding of peanut pod maturity and evaluates existing traditional and non-invasive approaches for maturity estimation. It aims to identify the limitations of conventional techniques and explore the integration of advanced sensing technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and geospatial analytics to enhance precision and scalability in peanut maturity assessment and harvest decision-making. This review examines traditional destructive techniques such as the hull scrape method and pod blasting, followed by emerging non-invasive methods employing proximal and remote sensing platforms. Applications of vegetation indices, multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, and AI-based data analytics are discussed in the context of maturity prediction. Additionally, the potential of multimodal remote sensing data fusion and digital frameworks integrating spatial big data analytics, centralized data management, and cloud-based graphical interfaces is explored as a pathway toward end-to-end decision-support systems. Recent advances in non-invasive sensing and AI-assisted modeling have demonstrated significant improvements in scalability, precision, and automation compared with traditional manual approaches. However, their effectiveness remains constrained by the limited inclusion of agroclimatic, phenological, and cultivar-specific variables. Furthermore, the translation of model outputs into actionable, field-level harvest decisions is still underdeveloped, underscoring the need for integrated, user-centric digital infrastructure. Achieving a robust and transferable digital peanut maturity estimation system will require comprehensive ground-truth data across cultivars, regions, and growing seasons. Multidisciplinary collaborations among agronomists, data scientists, growers, and technology providers will be essential for developing practical, field-ready solutions. Integrating AI, multimodal sensing, and geospatial analytics holds immense potential to transform peanut maturity estimation. Such innovations promise to enhance harvest precision, economic returns, and sustainability while reducing manual effort and uncertainty, ultimately improving the efficiency and quality of life for peanut producers worldwide. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers in Smart Agriculture 2026)
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24 pages, 10406 KB  
Article
Evaluating the Performance of AlphaEarth Foundation Embeddings for Irrigated Cropland Mapping Across Regions and Years
by Lulu Yang, Yuan Gao, Xiangyang Zhao, Nannan Liang, Ru Ma, Shixiang Xi, Xiao Zhang and Rui Wang
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1065; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071065 - 2 Apr 2026
Viewed by 450
Abstract
Accurate irrigated cropland mapping is critical for agricultural water management and food security. Existing image-based irrigation mapping workflows primarily rely on vegetation indices and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter features, which have limited capacity to characterize the temporal evolution of irrigation processes and [...] Read more.
Accurate irrigated cropland mapping is critical for agricultural water management and food security. Existing image-based irrigation mapping workflows primarily rely on vegetation indices and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter features, which have limited capacity to characterize the temporal evolution of irrigation processes and crop growth conditions. The AlphaEarth Foundation (AEF) model developed by Google DeepMind provides compact embeddings with temporal semantic information learned via self-supervision, yet their utility for irrigation mapping has not been systematically assessed. In this study, a comprehensive assessment of AEF embeddings for irrigated cropland mapping was performed in terms of feature separability, classification performance, and spatiotemporal transferability. Experiments were conducted in two representative irrigated regions: the Guanzhong Plain in China and Kansas in the USA. Class separability of the 64 embedding dimensions was quantified using the Jeffries–Matusita (JM) distance. Then, the AEF embeddings were compared with the Sentinel feature set (Sentinel-2 bands, normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI), enhanced vegetation index(EVI), normalized difference water index(NDWI) and Sentinel-1 vertical transmit vertical receive(VV), vertical transmit horizontal receive(VH)) using K-means clustering and supervised classifiers, including Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP). Finally, transfer experiments across 2022 and 2024 in the Guanzhong Plain and Kansas were conducted to examine cross-year and cross-region performance. The results showed that AEF embeddings consistently provide stronger class separability in both study areas, with a maximum JM distance of 1.58 (A29). Using AEF embeddings, RF achieved overall accuracies (OA) of 0.95 in the Guanzhong Plain and 0.93 in Kansas, outperforming models based on Sentinel-1/2 bands and indices. Notably, unsupervised K-means clustering on AEF embeddings yielded OA > 0.85, indicating high intrinsic separability between irrigated and rainfed croplands. Transfer experiments further demonstrate stable temporal transfer (cross-year OA > 0.87), whereas cross-region transfer is constrained by differences in irrigation regimes, crop phenology and management practices, resulting in limited spatial generalization (OA~0.3). Overall, this study demonstrates the potential of high-information-density representations from geospatial foundation models for irrigated cropland mapping and provides methodological and technical insights to support transfer learning and operational mapping over large areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near Real-Time (NRT) Agriculture Monitoring)
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29 pages, 5973 KB  
Article
Beyond Vegetation Indices: Winter Solar Radiation and Soil Properties Drive Wheat Yield Prediction in the Arid Steppes of Kazakhstan Using Gradient Boosting
by Marua Alpysbay, Serik Nurakynov and Azamat Kaldybayev
Agriculture 2026, 16(7), 782; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture16070782 - 1 Apr 2026
Viewed by 467
Abstract
A comprehensive analytical framework has been developed for the spatio-temporal forecasting of spring wheat yield in risk-prone rainfed agricultural zones. The study is grounded in 25-year time series integrating remote sensing data, meteorological reanalysis products, and soil parameters. The implementation of the XGBoost [...] Read more.
A comprehensive analytical framework has been developed for the spatio-temporal forecasting of spring wheat yield in risk-prone rainfed agricultural zones. The study is grounded in 25-year time series integrating remote sensing data, meteorological reanalysis products, and soil parameters. The implementation of the XGBoost algorithm enabled the modeling of complex nonlinear biophysical relationships. To account for spatial autocorrelation and Tobler’s First Law of Geography, a two-level validation strategy was employed. The interpolation performance achieved an accuracy of R2 = 0.69 (RMSE = 0.33 t/ha), while extrapolation to unseen regions yielded R2 = 0.65 (RMSE = 0.35 t/ha), demonstrating the robustness and transferability of the proposed architecture. Application of the TreeSHAP interpretability framework revealed the dominant influence of agroclimatic drivers, highlighting the critical role of April soil moisture recharge and the significance of winter insolation as a proxy for snow cover persistence and surface albedo dynamics. The superiority of NDWI over NDVI for detecting latent water stress during the grain-filling stage was empirically confirmed. Unlike prior frameworks that rely predominantly on growing-season vegetation indices, the present study demonstrates that pre-seasonal agroclimatic drivers—particularly winter solar radiation and April moisture recharge—exert a stronger influence on yield than mid-season NDVI in arid rainfed systems. Geospatial analysis identified a pronounced domain shift in foothill and irrigated clusters, attributed to the coarse spatial resolution of climate grids and the irrigation-induced decoupling of crop phenology from precipitation regimes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Artificial Intelligence and Digital Agriculture)
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18 pages, 2824 KB  
Article
Semantic Segmentation of Coffee Crops with PlanetScope Images: A Comparative Analysis of Spectral Band Combinations for U-Net Architecture
by Daniel Henrique Leite, Domingos Sárvio Magalhães Valente, Pedro Maya Ferreira Arruda, Gabriel Dumbá Monteiro de Castro, Daniel Marçal de Queiroz, Diego Bedin Marin and Fábio Daniel Tancredi
AgriEngineering 2026, 8(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering8040125 - 1 Apr 2026
Viewed by 342
Abstract
Coffee is among the primary agricultural commodities in international trade; however, mapping coffee crops in mountainous regions faces limitations due to high spectral variability and complex canopy structures. This study hypothesized that optimized spectral band combinations focused on the visible spectrum may outperform [...] Read more.
Coffee is among the primary agricultural commodities in international trade; however, mapping coffee crops in mountainous regions faces limitations due to high spectral variability and complex canopy structures. This study hypothesized that optimized spectral band combinations focused on the visible spectrum may outperform configurations including near-infrared (NIR) for coffee crop segmentation. This work aimed to evaluate how different spectral band combinations affect the performance of the U-Net for segmenting coffee crops in mountainous regions. Seven PlanetScope images (4 m resolution) from Matas de Minas, Brazil, covering different phenological stages in 2023–2024, were divided into 316 training patches and 25 test patches of 256 × 256 pixels and used to train U-Net models across five spectral band combinations: (B, G, R), (B, G, NIR), (B, R, NIR), (G, R, NIR), and (B, G, R, NIR). The visible spectrum combination (B, G, R) demonstrated superior performance with an overall Accuracy of 0.8669 and, for the Coffee Crops class, an F1-score of 0.8682 and an IoU of 0.7671, outperforming all NIR-inclusive configurations. Visible bands’ sensitivity to pigmentation variations proved more effective in heterogeneous environments, while NIR increased spectral confusion near native vegetation and crop edges. The model overestimated cultivated area by 18.3% due to mixed pixels from 4 m resolution and mountainous terrain. These findings confirm that visible-spectrum bands offer a cost-effective alternative for coffee segmentation, though higher spatial resolution is needed for improved boundary delineation. Full article
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26 pages, 6983 KB  
Article
Early-Season Mapping of Tobacco Cultivation Using a Stacked Generalization Ensemble Method: A Case Study in Changting County, China
by Wei Liu, Yuanzhuo Sun, Longmeng Lei, Hanyu Zhang, Shengshan Wu, Bobo Li, Lanhui Li, Hui Li, Mei Sun, Ying Yuan, Fuliang Deng and Quan Xiong
Agriculture 2026, 16(7), 771; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture16070771 - 31 Mar 2026
Viewed by 305
Abstract
Accurate and timely information on tobacco cultivation is essential for macro-level regulation, tobacco monopoly management, and farmer support in China. Remote sensing offers an efficient means for mapping tobacco, yet most studies focus on mid- to late-season identification, while early-season detection remains underexplored. [...] Read more.
Accurate and timely information on tobacco cultivation is essential for macro-level regulation, tobacco monopoly management, and farmer support in China. Remote sensing offers an efficient means for mapping tobacco, yet most studies focus on mid- to late-season identification, while early-season detection remains underexplored. Therefore, we integrated multi-source remote sensing data with the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to quantify separability between tobacco and competing crops, determined the optimal early-season phenological window and discriminative features, and developed an early-season tobacco mapping approach using a stacked generalization ensemble. The results show that January–February period provides the most effective early identification window for Changting County, with near-infrared (NIR) and water-sensitive features contributing most to class discrimination. The stacked ensemble achieved an overall accuracy of 87.17%, with producer and user accuracies of 85.97% and 92.28%, respectively, outperforming individual classifiers. At the township scale, the mapped tobacco area was strongly associated with tobacco purchase volumes (R2 = 0.819), supporting the reliability of the derived maps. Spatially, tobacco fields exhibited a pronounced corridor-like pattern, primarily influenced by proximity to water systems and terrain conditions. The proposed workflow provides tobacco management agencies with timely, spatially explicit information to support precise and intelligent tobacco production management. Full article
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28 pages, 8290 KB  
Article
Phenology-Aware Collaborative Decision-Making and AG-PSTC Algorithm for Precision Irrigation in Smart Tea Gardens
by Luofa Wu, Helai Liu, Shifu Shu and Chun Ye
Electronics 2026, 15(7), 1429; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15071429 - 30 Mar 2026
Viewed by 256
Abstract
Tea garden irrigation suffers from time delays, nonlinear interference, and phenological biomass fluctuations caused by plucking, leading to the failure of traditional Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) and fixed-threshold models in precise water supply. This study proposes a precision irrigation system for smart tea gardens integrating [...] Read more.
Tea garden irrigation suffers from time delays, nonlinear interference, and phenological biomass fluctuations caused by plucking, leading to the failure of traditional Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) and fixed-threshold models in precise water supply. This study proposes a precision irrigation system for smart tea gardens integrating Phenology-Aware Collaborative Decision-Making and an Adaptive Gain Predictive Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Control (AG-PSTC) algorithm. A “temperature–time–water” phenological reference model was constructed, and Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) was introduced to decouple shoot density changes into phenology-driven and water stress components, realizing dynamic target soil moisture (Wtarget) setting. The AG-PSTC algorithm combined an improved Smith predictor for phase compensation and a barrier function-based adaptive super-twisting term for chattering elimination and finite-time convergence. Simulations showed AG-PSTC reduced rise time by 78% and steady-state error by four orders of magnitude compared with PID, with robust performance under ±40% time-delay perturbation. Field tests confirmed the system suppressed false irrigation during plucking, with soil moisture standard deviation within 1.51%. This study provides a vertical integration framework from crop physiological models to precision control, promoting the transition of tea garden irrigation from experience-based to demand-based. Full article
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32 pages, 21931 KB  
Article
Harmonic Phenology Mapping: From Vegetation Indices to Field Delineation
by Filip Papić, Mario Miler, Damir Medak and Luka Rumora
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1011; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071011 - 27 Mar 2026
Viewed by 445
Abstract
Operational agricultural monitoring in the Central European lowlands requires timely parcel boundaries; however, unmarked field edges produce minimal spectral contrast in single-date imagery. Previous works demonstrated that harmonic NDVI encoding enables zero-shot field delineation using foundational models, but the influence of the spectral [...] Read more.
Operational agricultural monitoring in the Central European lowlands requires timely parcel boundaries; however, unmarked field edges produce minimal spectral contrast in single-date imagery. Previous works demonstrated that harmonic NDVI encoding enables zero-shot field delineation using foundational models, but the influence of the spectral index choice on temporal boundaries remained unquantified. This study systematically evaluates eleven vegetation indices—NDVI, GNDVI, NDRE, EVI, EVI2, SAVI, MSAVI, NDWI, CIg, CIre, and NDYVI—within a fixed harmonic phenology encoding pipeline. A one-year PlanetScope time series (15 × 15 km, Slavonija, Croatia) was decomposed via annual sinusoidal regression to extract per-pixel phase, amplitude, and mean parameters. These harmonic descriptors were mapped to HSV colour channels and segmented using the Segment Anything Model without fine-tuning. Official agricultural parcels (PAAFRD, 2025) provided ground truth for pixel-wise, object-wise, and size-stratified evaluation. Performance stratified into three tiers based on object-wise metrics. Soil-adjusted and enhanced-greenness indices (MSAVI, EVI, EVI2, and SAVI) achieved F1 = 0.51–0.52, and mIoU = 0.70–0.71, statistically outperforming standard ratio formulations (NDVI: F1 = 0.49) and chlorophyll indices (CIg, CIre: F1 = 0.45–0.47). Pixel-wise scores remained compressed (F1 > 0.88 across all indices), indicating consistent interior coverage but index-dependent boundary precision. Error analysis revealed scale-dependent patterns: merging dominated small parcels (<10,000 m2), while fragmentation increased with parcel size. Results demonstrate that spectral formulation is a systematic design factor in phenology-based delineation, with soil background correction and dynamic range compression improving seasonal trajectory separability. The harmonic parameters generated by this framework provide feature-ready input for crop classification, suggesting that integrated boundary extraction and crop mapping workflows merit further investigation. Full article
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19 pages, 3953 KB  
Article
Global Spring–Autumn Phenology Coupling Inferred from Satellite Observations and Reanalysis-Based Climate Limitations
by Xiaolu Li, Yu Wei, Tong Qiu, Alison Donnelly and Yetang Wang
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(7), 1002; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18071002 - 27 Mar 2026
Viewed by 458
Abstract
Spring and autumn phenology jointly regulate terrestrial carbon, water, and energy exchanges, yet the mechanisms linking seasonal transitions remain debated under increasing hydroclimatic stress. Here, we integrate satellite-derived phenology with reanalysis-based indicators of land–atmosphere coupling to examine how spring onset interacts with growing [...] Read more.
Spring and autumn phenology jointly regulate terrestrial carbon, water, and energy exchanges, yet the mechanisms linking seasonal transitions remain debated under increasing hydroclimatic stress. Here, we integrate satellite-derived phenology with reanalysis-based indicators of land–atmosphere coupling to examine how spring onset interacts with growing season controlling factors and how these interactions shape autumn senescence at the global scale. Globally, start-of-season (SOS) and end-of-season (EOS) timings are positively coupled, with later SOS generally followed by later EOS, and this relationship becomes stronger when only later-SOS years are considered. However, SOS does not induce coherent global shifts in growing season climate limitation. Piecewise structural equation modeling reveals that SOS influences EOS primarily through a direct phenological pathway, with a mean path coefficient of ~0.4 day·day−1 explaining approximately 26% of global EOS variability. In contrast, energy and water-mediated pathways contribute smaller but spatially heterogeneous effects, together accounting for ~5% of explained variance on average. SOS–EOS coupling is strongest in water-limited regimes, particularly in grasslands and shrublands. Managed croplands exhibit distinct and more heterogeneous responses, reflecting partial decoupling of phenology from natural hydroclimatic constraints. Collectively, our results indicate that spring phenology exerts a robust but spatially variable influence on autumn timing, dominated by direct effects rather than indirect mediation through growing season climate limitations, with regional modulation imposed by background hydroclimatic conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Atmospheric Remote Sensing)
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26 pages, 4650 KB  
Article
Vegetation Structure Drives Seasonal and Diel Dynamics of Avian Soundscapes in an Urban Wetland
by Zhe Wen, Zhewen Ye, Yunfeng Yang and Yao Xiong
Plants 2026, 15(7), 1023; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15071023 - 26 Mar 2026
Viewed by 408
Abstract
Urban wetlands are acoustic hotspots where vegetation structure, hydrological dynamics, and anthropogenic noise interact, yet multi-season assessments of how vegetation influences avian soundscapes are limited. This study explored bird soundscape dynamics across forest, open forest grassland, and meadow habitats in Nanjing Xinjizhou National [...] Read more.
Urban wetlands are acoustic hotspots where vegetation structure, hydrological dynamics, and anthropogenic noise interact, yet multi-season assessments of how vegetation influences avian soundscapes are limited. This study explored bird soundscape dynamics across forest, open forest grassland, and meadow habitats in Nanjing Xinjizhou National Wetland Park, eastern China, using passive acoustic monitoring during spring and autumn 2023. Twelve sampling points (four per vegetation type) were established, and six acoustic indices were calculated, including the Acoustic Complexity Index (ACI), Acoustic Diversity Index (ADI), Acoustic Evenness Index (AEI), Bioacoustic Index (BIO), Normalized Difference Soundscape Index (NDSI), and Acoustic Entropy Index (H). were calculated from 48-h recordings each season. Random forest models and redundancy analysis assessed the relationships between acoustic indices, fine-scale vegetation parameters (e.g., crown width, tree height, species richness), and anthropogenic factors (e.g., distance to roads/trails, surface hardness). Vegetation structure, particularly crown width, was the primary driver of avian acoustic diversity, with broad-crowned forests consistently exhibiting the highest acoustic complexity. In spring, anthropogenic factors such as trail and road proximity dominated soundscape variation, suppressing biological sounds. In autumn, with reduced human presence, vegetation structure emerged as the dominant factor, while bioacoustic activity remained elevated despite reduced peaks in acoustic complexity. Proximity to roads increased low-frequency (1–2 kHz) noise and suppressed mid-frequency (4–8 kHz) bird vocalizations, but trees with crown widths ≥4 m maintained higher acoustic diversity even near disturbance sources. This study demonstrates that vegetation structure mediates both resource availability and sound propagation, buffering the effects of anthropogenic disturbance in frequency-specific ways. Multi-season sampling is crucial for understanding the dynamic interplay between vegetation phenology and human activity that shapes urban wetland soundscapes. Full article
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