Field boundary and field size data provide unique measures for agrarian-transition research in smallholder regions in Asia
COMMERCIAL SATELLITE MADE IT POSSILE TO EXTRACT FIELDS IN SMALLHOLDER REGIONS
- Crop field boundary is an essential agricultural variable, and crop field sizes are indicative of the degree of agricultural capital investment, mechanization, and labor intensity.
- Information on delineated field boundaries and field sizes are needed for land use planning, allocation of resources, and agricultural modeling.
- Field extraction is extremely challenging in smallholder regions in Asia and Africa due to small field sizes, irregularly-shaped boundaries, narrow margins, and heterogeneities within and across fields.
- With commercial high-resolution images provided by NASA and new computer-vision algorithms, crop field boundaries are produced in smallholder regions in multiple countries in Asia.
- Agrarian transitions are studied based on characterization of field/farm size changes in multiple Asian countries.
