ASSESSMENT OF CROP ROTATION USING MULTI POLARIZED SENTINEL-1 TEMPORAL SAR DATA OVER PARTS OF KUMAUN REGION OF UTTARAKHAND

Accurate information about crop rotation is essential for administrators, managers and various government departments for assessment, monitoring, and management of various resources for crop escalation. Radar remote sensing, because of its all-weather capability and assured uninterrupted data supply can show a substantial part in the evaluation of crop rotation. Twenty-Nine (29) Level-1 Ground Range Detected (GRD) Sentinel-1 C band scenes acquired in the Interferometric Wide (IW) swath mode during the period from 11th November 2017 to 30th November 2018 over Kumaun region, Uttarakhand were utilized to explain the feasibility of multi-temporal SAR data for crop rotation. Principal Component Analysis was adopted to demarcate different crop rotation trends throughout the study area. The results show that ‘wheat to paddy’ is the highest practiced crop rotation with 27.95% coverage, whereas ‘mustard to sugarcane’ is the lowest practiced crop rotation with 2.86% coverage of the entire area of study provided with 80% of an overall accuracy acquired from the ground-truth data from IIRS/ISRO. It is a benefit for the decision-makers, administrators and policymakers to take reliable decisions about a particular region regarding land management and natural resources.