Automatic Cotton Mapping Using Time Series of Sentinel-2 Images

Large-scale crop mapping is essential for agricultural management. Phenological variation often exists in the same crop due to different climatic regions or practice management, resulting in current classification models requiring sufficient training samples from different regions. However, the cost of sample collection is more time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive, so it is necessary to develop automatic crop mapping models that require only a few samples and can be extended to a large area. In this study, a new white bolls index (WBI) based on the unique canopy of cotton at the bolls opening stage was proposed, which can characterize the intensity of bolls opening. The value of WBI will increase as the opening of the bolls increases. As a result, the white bolls index can be used to detect cotton automatically from other crops. Four study areas in different regions were used to evaluate the WBI performance. The overall accuracy (OA) for the four study sites was more than 82%. Additionally, the dates when the opening stage of bolls begins can be determined based on the time series of WBI. The results of this research demonstrated the potential of the proposed approach for cotton mapping using sentinel-2 time series of remotely sensed data.