Lorenzo Busetto

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment IREA

The ERMES agromonitoring system for rice cultivations integrates EO data at different resolutions, crop models, and user-provided in situ data in a unified system, which drives two operational downstream services for rice monitoring. The first is aimed at providing information concerning the behavior of the current season at regional/rice district...

MODIStsp is a new R package allowing automating the creation of raster time series derived from MODIS Land Products. It allows performing several preprocessing steps (e.g. download, mosaicing, reprojection and resize) on MODIS products on a selected time period and area. All processing parameters can be set with a user-friendly GUI, allowing users...

Agricultural monitoring systems require spatio-temporal information on widely cultivated staple crops like rice. More emphasis has been made on area estimation and crop detection than on the temporal aspects of crop cultivation, but seasonal and temporal information such as i) crop duration, ii) date of crop establishment and iii) cropping intensit...

The potential of multitemporal coarse spatial resolution remotely sensed images for vegetation monitoring is reduced in fragmented landscapes, where most of the pixels are composed of a mixture of different surfaces. Several approaches have been proposed for the estimation of reflectance or NDVI values of the different land-cover classes included i...

This research aims at developing a remote sensing technique for monitoring the interannual variability of the European larch phenological cycle in the Alpine region of Aosta Valley (Northern Italy) and to evaluate its relationships with climatic factors. Phenological field observations were conducted in eight test sites from 2005 to 2007 to determi...

The availability of high-resolution reference datasets representing in space and time and with high accuracy areas affected by fires is strategic for the validation of remotely-sensed Burned Area (BA) products. This paper proposes a methodology designed to build a burned area reference dataset from Sentinel-2 (S2) images at continental scale by imp...

Information on when and where rice is planted and harvested is important for crop management under a changing climate and for monitoring crop production for early warning and market information systems. The diversity of plant genetic, crop management, and environmental conditions leads to a wide variation in the number of rice crops per year and th...

Due to the low efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers in flooded rice paddies, there is a rising demand for tools able to detect crop nitrogen status in space and time to allow farmers to use the technical novelties of precision agriculture to improve fertilizer management in extensive fields. This work sets up an operational approach to increase nitro...

This study introduces a first assessment of the capabilities of PRISMA (PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa)—the new hyperspectral satellite sensor of the Italian Space Agency (ASI)—for Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation (NPV) monitoring, a topic which is becoming very relevant in the field of sustainable agriculture, being an indicator...

sen2r is a scalable and flexible R package to enable downloading and preprocessing of Sentinel-2 satellite imagery via an accessible and easy to install interface. It allows the execution of several preprocessing steps which are commonly performed by Sentinel-2 users: searching the Sentinel-2 archive for datasets available over a spatial area of in...

Despite of their increasing importance as inputs to models for a wide range of scientific fields, high-resolution meteorological variables are not recorded very often on spatially regular grids. This problem is usually overcome by using data from reanalysis models, although they are less accurate. This paper discusses the development of a new spati...

Rice mapping products were derived from Sentinel-1A and Landsat-8 OLI multi-temporal imagery over Northern Italy at the early stages of the 2015 growing season. A rule-based algorithm was applied to synthetic statistical metrics (TSDs-Temporal Spectra Descriptors) computed from temporal datasets of optical spectral indices and SAR backscattering co...

The aim of this work is to assess the utility of combining Sentinel-2A and Landsat (Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 OLI) LAI time series for rice crop monitoring. LAI maps were produced in three countries (Italy, Spain and Greece) using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms trained on simulated radiative transfer modelling data specifically gen...

MODIStsp v1.3.7 now allows download and preprocessing of MODIS Collection 006 datasets. MODIStsp is a ”R” package devoted to automatizing the creation of time series of rasters derived from MODIS Land Products data. MODIStsp allows to perform several preprocessing steps (e.g., download, mosaicking, reprojection and resize) on MODIS data available w...

In this study we used the PhenoRice algorithm to track recent variations of rice cultivation practices along the Senegal River Valley. Time series of MODIS imagery with 250m spatial resolution and a nominal 8-days frequency were used as input for the algorithm to map the spatial and temporal variations of rice cultivated area and of several importa...

The present short paper describes the functionalities of a desktop tool enabling non-expert users to develop downstream services for the periodic download and processing of data from Sentinel sources. Index Terms: downstream service, flooded area mapping, Sentinel data, spectral indicators.

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical variable fundamental in natural vegetation and agricultural land monitoring and modelling studies. This paper is aimed at comparing, validating and discussing different LAI satellite products from operational services and customized solution based on innovative Earth Observation (EO) data such as Landsat-7...

To meet the growing demands from public and private stakeholders for early yield estimates, a high-resolution (2 km × 2 km) rice yield forecasting system based on the integration of the WARM model and remote sensing (RS) technologies was developed. RS was used to identify rice-cropped area and to derive spatially distributed sowing dates, and for t...

The intensive rice cultivation area in northwestern Italy hosts the largest surface of rice paddies in Europe, and it is valued as a substantial habitat for aquatic biodiversity, with the paddies acting as a surrogate for the lost natural wetlands. The extent of submerged paddies strictly depends on crop management practices: in this framework, the...

In this article, we propose an automatic procedure for classification of UAV imagery to map weed presence in rice paddies at early stages of the growing cycle. The objective was to produce a weed map (common weeds and cover crop remnants) to support variable rate technologies for site-specific weed management. A multi-spectral ortho-mosaic, derived...

Crop insurance is a viable solution to reduce the vulnerability of smallholder farmers to risks from pest and disease outbreaks, extreme weather events, and market shocks that threaten their household food and income security. In developing and emerging countries, the implementation of area yield-based insurance, the form of crop insurance preferre...

Government policies have resulted in rapid expansion of irrigated rice area in Mauritania and Senegal through private and public investments. Farmers switch rice cultivation from the wet to the dry season to achieve higher production while rice double cropping is increasingly practiced. As a result Senegal is close to attaining self-sufficiency in...

Agricultural monitoring has greatly benefited from the increased availability of a wide variety of remote-sensed satellite imagery, ground-sensed data (e.g., weather station networks) and crop models, delivering a wealth of actionable information to stakeholders to better streamline and improve agricultural practices. Nevertheless, as the degree of...

The triangle method has been applied to derive a weekly indicator of evaporative fraction on vegetated areas in a temperate region in Northern Italy. Daily MODIS Aqua Land Surface Temperature (MYD11A1) data has been combined with air temperature maps and 8-day composite MODIS NDVI (MOD13Q1/MYD13Q1) data to estimate the Evaporative Fraction (EF) at...

This paper presents and evaluates multitemporal LAI estimates derived from Sentinel-2A data on rice cultivated area identified using time series of Sentinel-1A images over the main European rice districts for the 2016 crop season. This study combines the information conveyed by Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-2A into a high-resolution LAI retrieval chain....

Crop simulation models are commonly used to forecast the performance of cropping systems under different hypotheses of change. Their use on a regional scale is generally constrained, however, by a lack of information on the spatial and temporal variability of environment-related input variables (e.g., soil) and agricultural practices (e.g., sowing...

Sumary brochure concerning the tools developed within the ERMES project to disseminate and collect information to/from the users

ERMES brochure concerning use of advanced crop modelling solutions as a support for farm management

ERMES brochure concerning the use of multitemporal VHR satellite images as a support for Precision Agriculture applications on rice

Recent changes in rice crop management within Northern Italy rice district led to a reduction of seeding in flooding condition, which may have an impact on reservoir water management and on the animal and plant communities that depend on the flooded paddies. Therefore, monitoring and quantifying the spatial and temporal variability of water presenc...

As a result of government policies irrigated rice cultivation in the Senegal River Valley has shifted to from the wet to the dry season. Moreover, private and government investments have led to doubling of the total rice acreage since 2007 and cropping intensity has increased from1 to 2 crops per year. However, temperature extremes (both hot and co...

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies in order to assess crop yield. Frequently, plant canopy analyzers (LAI-2000) and digital cameras for hemispherical photography (DHP) are used for indirect effective plant area index (PAI_eff) estimates. Nevertheless, these i...

The aim of this report is to illustrate by means of a series of case studies the implementation of mapping and assessment of forest ecosystem services in different contexts and geographical levels. Methodological aspects, data issues, approaches, limitations, gaps and further steps for improvement are analysed for providing good practices and decis...

The RAdiative transfer Model Intercomparison (RAMI) activity focuses on the benchmarking of canopy radiative transfer (RT) models. For the current fourth phase of RAMI, six highly realistic virtual plant environments were constructed on the basis of intensive field data collected from (both deciduous and coniferous) forest stands as well as test si...

In this work we present a method to estimate water fraction in ricefields using MODIS data. Model calibration and validation has been performed using both field information and higher resolution images (Landsat 8). Estimations in the period 2000-2014 showed a diffused reduction of water fraction, according with the diffusion of dry seeding in ricef...

In the study of agro-ecosystems the estimation of leaf area index (LAI) it is critical to obtain information on the spatial and temporal variability of crops. In this paper we obtained thematic maps of LAI with a regression model, were field data were collected with a smartphone application. The maps produced, validated with LAI data collected with...

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies in order to assess crop yield. LAI estimates can be classified as direct or indirect methods. Direct methods are destructive, time consuming, and difficult to apply over large fields. Indirect methods are non-destructive and...

This study evaluates the potential of airborne remote sensing images to detect water stress in maize. Visible and near infrared CASI (Itres Research Ltd., Calgary, AL, Canada) and thermal AHS-160 (Sensytech Inc., Beverly, MA, USA) data were acquired at three different times during the day on a maize field (Zea mays L.) grown with three different ir...

Asian countries strongly depend on rice production for food security. The major rice-growing season (June to October) is highly exposed to the risk of tropical storm related damage. Unbiased and transparent approaches to assess the risk of rice crop damage are essential to support mitigation and disaster response strategies in the region. This stud...

The aim of this report is to illustrate by means of a series of case studies the implementation of mapping and assessment of forest ecosystem services in different contexts and geographical levels. Methodological aspects, data issues, approaches, limitations, gaps and further steps for improvement are analysed for providing good practices and decis...

This technical report describes the intensive field campaign over rice field of Rosasco site, in Italy in July 2014. Thanks to a collaboration between ImagineS and ERMES project (http://www.ermes-fp7space.eu/), CNR-IREA (http://www.irea.cnr.it/en/) has collected effective LAI, LAI, FAPAR and FCover measurements. The data have been provided to EOLAB...

En los tiempos actuales, ante el aumento de la demanda de alimentos, el incremento del precio de ellos y la adopción de nuevas técnicas para la agricultura, es más importante la optimización de las explotaciones agrícolas. Ante este escenario, nace el proyecto Europeo ERMES (An Earth Observation Model based Rice Information Service, http://www.ERME...

Introduzione ed obiettivi: Per un efficiente monitoraggio dei sistemi colturali, risulta di fondamentale importanza disporre con tempestività di informazioni circa la tipologia delle colture seminate e le dinamiche colturali in atto. Gli agro-ecosistemi europei si caratterizzano per avere forte frammentazione dei singoli appezzamenti agricoli, ampi...

Aerobiological data can be used as indirect but reliable measures of flowering phenology to analyze the response of plant species to ongoing climate changes. The aims of this study are to evaluate the performance of several phenological models for predicting the pollen start of season (PSS) in seven spring-flowering trees (Alnus glutinosa, Acer neg...

This paper presents a method for mapping the nitrogen (N) status in a maize field using hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. An airborne survey was conducted with an AISA Eagle hyperspectral sensor over an experimental farm where maize (Zea mays L.) was grown with two N fertilization levels (0 and 100 kg N ha −1) in four replicates. Leaf and canop...

An updated series of distribution maps of more than 50 taxa, mainly of forest tree species, is presented along with the description of involved materials, inventory data and ancillary datasets, data-processing and modelling methods. Different methodologies are discussed and corresponding specific maps are presented for supporting the assessment on...

This paper presents a method for mapping water stress in a maize field using hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. An airborne survey using AISA (Specim, Finland) was performed in July 2008 over an experimental farm in Italy. Hyperspectral data were acquired over a maize field with three different irrigation regimes. An intensive field campaign was...

Forest ecosystems play a key role in the global carbon cycle. Spatially explicit data and assessments of forest biomass and carbon are therefore crucial for designing and implementing effective sustainable forest management options and forest related policies. In this contribution, we present European-wide maps of forest biomass and carbon stock sp...

Land surface satellite time series can be interpreted as the output of a dynamical system which generates a process of interest. In this research, the qualitative theory of dynamical systems is applied to understand seasonal time series, which correspond, respectively, to spectral indexes and to the reflectance of single wavelengths from Alpine are...