A Practical Remote Sensing Monitoring Framework for Late Frost Damage in Wine Grapes Using Multi-Source Satellite Data

Abstract

Late frost damage is one of the main meteorological disasters that affect the growth of wine grapes in spring, causing a decline in wine grapes quality and a reduction in yield in Northwest China. At present, remote sensing technology has been widely used in the field of crop meteorological disasters monitoring and loss assessments, but little research has been carried out on late frost damage in wine grapes. To monitor the impact of late frost in wine grapes accurately and quickly, in this research, we selected the Ningxia planting area as the study area. A practical framework of late frost damage on wine grapes by integrating visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared satellite data is proposed. This framework includes: (1) Wine grape planting area extraction using Gaofen-1 (GF-1), Landsat-8, and Sentinel-2 based on optimal feature selection and Random Forest (RF) algorithm; (2) retrieval of the land surface temperature (LST) using Landsat-8 thermal infrared data; (3) data fusion using Landsat-8 LST and MODIS LST for a high spatiotemporal resolution of LST with the Enhanced Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (ESTARFM); (4) the estimation of daily minimum air temperature (Tmin) using downscaled LST and meteorological station data; (5) monitoring and evaluation of the degree of late frost damage in wine grapes in April 2020 by combining satellite-derived data and late frost indicators. The results show that the total area of wine grapes extracted in Ningxia was about 39,837 ha. The overall accuracy was 90.47%, the producer’s accuracy was 91.09%, and the user’s accuracy was 90.22%. The root mean square (RMSE) and the coefficient of determination (R2) of the Tmin estimation model were 1.67 ℃ and 0.91, respectively. About 41.12% of the vineyards suffered severe late frost damage, and the total affected area was about 16,381 ha during April 20–25, 2020. This suggests the satellite data can accurately monitor late frost damage in wine grapes by mapping the wine grape area and estimating Tmin. The results can help farmers to take remedial measures to reduce late frost damage in wine grapes, and provide an objective evaluation of late frost damage insurance claims for wine grapes. With the increasing weather extremes, this study has an important reference value for standardized global wine grape management and food security planning.