RICE HECTEREGE ESTIMATION / CULTIVATION MAPPING 
USING REMOTELY SENSED DATA AND GIS FACILITIES 
Alireza Dehghan — Project Manager 
Alireza Majd — R.S. Officer 
Agricultural Statistics & Information Department (ASID) 
Ministry of Agriculture, Tehran, IRAN 
@ : (+98) 21 653025 Fax : (+98) 21 650377 
Commission VII, Working Group 1 (WG VII/1) 
KEY WORDS: Agriculture, Monitoring, Estimation, Mapping, GIS 
ABSTRACT: 
Concerning to the Rice as a main crop in Iran. having the correct knowledge on the cultivated areas and its 
contribution is verv important for Ministry of Agriculture and to this subject a provincial project has been done in 
1994. In this project. analysis of TM data. GPS applications and GIS facilities were applied to define the rice 
hecterage and cultivation mapping of Gilan province with an area about 15000 square Km. in the northern part of 
Iran. The below stages have been concerned: 
- Geometric correction / Mosaicking of 8 TM Quadrants covering the whole province and masking of interested area 
using 1:30.000 scale Topomaps and GCP selection. 
- Unsupervised classification of masked area to identify main agricultural regions and to obtain the auxiliary 
information for supervised classification in the future stages. 
- Ground checking of unsupervised classification results and definition of the proper areas for training sites selection 
- Concerning to the noticeable forest area in Gilan, these areas were omitted to decrease the disk space and 
computation time. 
- Pre-processing. Enhancement and classification of images to define the rice classes and hecterage estimation. Iti 
mentioned that different data manipulation including spectral ratio. principal component analysis. filtering and the 
like were applied to raise the spectral separability of rice against the other crops and vegetation. 
- Using GIS applications for rice cultivation mapping and preparation of 1:100,000 scale maps with 30 by 30 minutes 
geographic coordinates. 
- Using GPS facilities for ground sample checking and accuracy estimation of the obtained results. Concerning o 
correctness of the obtained results, the project is being expanded for the other regions with rice cultivation activities. 
1. PROJECT AREA 
The Gilan province in the northern part of Iran 2.1 1:50,000 scale administrative maps prepared 
with an area about 15000 square Km. has been bv statistics centre of Iran. 
selected as project area. Due to the vicinity of 
Gilan with the Forest region in the South / West 2.2 1:50,000 scale topomaps prepared bv gto 
and Caspian Sea in the North / East part, all graphical organization. 
necessarv conditions for rice cultivation ( soil, 
rainfall, rivers, ... ) are provided and since a long 2.3 8 TM color prints (Quarter Scene) covering 
period the rice cultivation activity was concidered of whole province (Plate 2). 
in this province, and about 1/4 of the total rice 
production obtain in Gilan. 2.4 TM digital data of July 1993. 
As shown on the plate 1, Gilan comprises the 2.5 EASI/PACE and ARC/INFO software for 
eleven township in which the rice 1s concidered as image processing and map production respec- 
main crop. tively. 
2.6 GPS (Global Positioning System) for ground 
2. MATERIALS sample location. 
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International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B7. Vienna 1996