A New Crop Spectral Signatures Database Interactive Tool (CSSIT)

Abstract

In many countries, commodities provided by the agriculture sector play an important role in the economy. Securing food is one aspect of this role, which can be achieved when the decision makers are supported by tools. The need for cheap, fast, and accurate tools with high temporal resolution and global coverage has encouraged the decision makers to use remote sensing technologies. Field spectroradiometer with high spectral resolution can substantially improve crop mapping by reducing similarities between different crop types that have similar ecological conditions. This is done by recording fine details of the crop interaction with sunlight. These details can increase the same crop recognition even with the variation in the crop chemistry and structure. This paper presents a new spectral signatures database interactive tool (CSSIT) for the major crops in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin such as wheat and potato. The CSSIT’s database combines different data such as spectral signatures for different periods of crop growth stages and many physical and chemical parameters for crops such as leaf area index (LAI) and chlorophyll-a content (CHC). In addition, the CSSIT includes functions for calculating indices from spectral signatures for a specific crop and user interactive dialog boxes for displaying spectral signatures of a specific crop at a specific period of time.