The Preparation of Updated Vegetation Maps by Processing Satellite Images: A Way in Sustainable Management of Agriculture

An important factor in sustainable agriculture and economic management is to calculate areas under different crops that the inputs of agriculture connect to this topic. Planning of agricultural mechanization, fertilizer and pesticide requirements, pests and diseases control, estimates of agricultural production, income and tax and financial planning, all linked to the cultivated areas and estimation of agricultural products. One of the problems in the agricultural section of Iran is the lack of accurate statistics of cultivated crops areas that this is much higher for horticultural products. Over time, it varies the area of land under cultivated crop, and orchards and bare lands; consequently the estimation of yield is not done as well due to these changes caused some problems in planning and management. Land Surveying is time-consuming and expensive, while mapping farms and orchards lands through classified satellite images is a high speed and low cost way. Nowadays, the satellite image processing techniques have developed for the estimation of crops, pest control, agricultural macro planning and preparing updated maps. A principal problem is the interference of plants spectral reflections that different methods have been proposed by researchers to differentiate vegetation on satellite images. At this paper, remote sensing imagery in mapping vegetation or various plants are investigated.