Rice is one of the staple foods for more than three billion people worldwide. Rice paddies accounted for approximately 11.5% of the World's arable land area during 2012. Rice provided ∼19% of the global dietary energy in recent times and its annual average consumption per capita was ∼65 kg during 2010–2011. Therefore, rice area mapping and forecasting its production is important for food security, where demands often exceed production due to an ever increasing population. Timely and accurate estimation of rice areas and forecasting its production can provide invaluable information for governments, planners, and decision makers in formulating policies in regard to import/export in the event of shortfall and/or surplus. The aim of this paper was to review the applicability of the remote sensing-based imagery for rice area mapping and forecasting its production. Recent advances on the resolutions (i.e., spectral, spatial, radiometric, and temporal) and availability of remote sensing imagery have allowed us timely collection of information on the growth and development stages of the rice crop. For elaborative understanding of the application of remote sensing sensors, following issues were described: the rice area mapping and forecasting its production using optical and microwave imagery, synergy between remote sensing-based methods and other developments, and their implications as an operational one. The overview of the studies to date indicated that remote sensing-based methods using optical and microwave imagery found to be encouraging. However, there were having some limitations, such as: (i) optical remote sensing imagery had relatively low spatial resolution led to inaccurate estimation of rice areas; and (ii) radar imagery would suffer from speckles, which potentially would degrade the quality of the images; and also the brightness of the backscatters were sensitive to the interacting surface. In addition, most of the methods used in forecasting rice yield were empirical in nature, so thus it would require further calibration and validation prior to implement over other geographical locations.

Rice is one of the staple foods across the world, thus information about its production is essential for ensuring food security. Here, our objective was to develop a method for mapping -boro‖ rice (i.e., cultivated during the months January to May) in a Bangladeshi context. In this paper, we used a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived 16-day composite of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at 250 m spatial resolution in conjunction with ancillary datasets (i.e., land use map, crop calendar, and ground-based rice production information) during the period 2007-2012. The proposed method consisted of three procedures: (i) ISODATA clustering and determining the boro rice signatures in temporal dimension using data from the period 2007-2009; (ii) formulating a mathematical model for extracting the boro rice areas using data from the period 2007-2009; and (iii) model calibration using data from the period 2007-2009 and its validation using data from the period 2010-2012. The implementation of the abovementioned procedures revealed reasonable agreements between the model (i.e., MODIS-based) and ground-based estimates of boro rice area at both country (i.e., percentage error in the range −0.83-1.42%) and district levels (i.e., r 2 in the range 0.69-0.89) during the period 2010-2012. Our proposed method demonstrated its effectiveness in mapping rice system at the regional/country scale.

This study aimed to develop a remote sensing-based method for forecasting rice yield by considering vegetation greenness conditions during initial and peak greenness stages of the crop; and implemented for “boro” rice in Bangladeshi context. In this research, we used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived two 16-day composite of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images at 250 m spatial resolution acquired during the initial (January 1 to January 16) and peak greenness (March 23/24 to April 6/7 depending on leap year) stages in conjunction with secondary datasets (i.e., boro suitability map, and ground-based information) during 2007-2012 period. The method consisted of two components: (i) developing a model for delineating area under rice cultivation before harvesting; and (ii) forecasting rice yield as a function of NDVI. Our results demonstrated strong agreements between the model (i.e., MODIS-based) and ground-based area estimates during 2010-2012 period, i.e., coefficient of determination (R2); root mean square error (RMSE); and relative error (RE) in between 0.93 to 0.95; 30,519 to 37,451 ha; and ±10% respectively at the 23 district-levels. We also found good agreements between forecasted (i.e., MODIS-based) and ground-based yields during 2010-2012 period (R2 between 0.76 and 0.86; RMSE between 0.21 and 0.29 Mton/ha, and RE between -5.45% and 6.65%) at the 23 district-levels. We believe that our developments of forecasting the boro rice yield would be useful for the decision makers in addressing food security in Bangladesh.

The objective of this study was to monitor the reclamation development and assess the LULC changes in a reclaimed area in Upper Egypt. GIS and remote sensing-based multi-temporal Landsat imageries (i.e., Landsat-5 and Landsat-8; 30m) were utilized for mapping and analyzing the spatiotemporal dynamics between 2005 to 2020. Both supervised-based maximum likelihood classifier (MLC) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)-based thresholds were implemented. The results of both methods were cross-compared and showed that the agriculture activities started in 2004 with small and sparse agriculture patches. The bare land occupied more than 65.1% of the total area between 2005-2008. Overall, using the MLC and NDVI-based classification, the authors observed an increase of approximately 455.6% (17,027.7 ha) and 477.2% (16,973.5 ha) over 15 years (2005-2020), respectively. The results could be very useful for assessing the success of the Egyptian strategies to sustain the agricultural land areas and food production through horizontal expansion and investment in the desert areas.

Although urbanization presents opportunities for new urban developments, it may have serious problems on environment and land use/cover patterns. The present study aims to evaluate the performance of built‑up delineation index set (BDIS) for mapping agricultural land loss in Upper Egypt. Three Landsat images were obtained for the years 1986, 2000, and 2016 and utilized as inputs to calculate the BDIS variables. Then a supervised classification technique (i.e., support vector machine) was used to classify the images. The findings showed that urban areas have witnessed a dramatic expansion at a growing rate of 44.1% during the 30 years. As a result, the loss of the agricultural land was found to be approximately 64.83 ha, which represents -4%, during the same period because of the urban expansion and the illegal construction of settlements. These findings would support the local decision makers in urban and agriculture land management authorities to develop sustainable development plans that control the spatiotemporal urban expansion and agricultural land loss.

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