IEEE GRSS UK&Ireland SEMINAR “Crop phenology monitoring with multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar data: polarimetric and dynamic perspectives”, Dr. Lucio Mascolo

#SAR #crop #phenology #synthetic-aperture-radar #radar #polarimetry #multitemporal #agriculture #application #geoscience #grss

Dr Lucio Mascolo at the Università degli studi di Napoli Parthenope will present “Crop phenology monitoring with multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar data: polarimetric and dynamic perspectives” at 12pm (UK time) on 16th May 2025.

This seminar is hosted by the IEEE GRSS UK&Ireland Chapter and co-hosted by the IEEE GRSS Chapters in Poland and Italy.

Registration

IEEE and GRSS members as well as non-IEEE Members are invited to Register and participate. IEEE members should include their IEEE Membership Number when registering.

Access to online Meeting

Registered Participants will be provided with the link prior to the event.

Abstract

Agricultural crops evolve from sowing to harvest through a succession of stages, the phenology, that characterize their development. Timely information on phenological stages of crops is fundamental to assist an efficient agricultural management and to support authorities in yield forecasting, predicting crops outputs or losses. The most accurate information on crop phenology is provided by ground campaigns where fields are surveyed on a weekly basis throughout the cultivation cycle, which is clearly not suitable to monitor large agricultural areas. In this contest, remote sensing is a powerful tool. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active microwave sensor providing day&night images at fine spatial resolution, in almost all weather conditions, being sensitive to the structural and dielectric properties of the plants (and the underlying soil). By exploiting the vector nature of microwaves, polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) instruments present greater sensitivities to a plant’s structure (e.g., orientation, shape) and dielectric characteristics (related to water content). As (for a given crop type) these properties change according to the phenological stages, multi-temporal PolSAR images have been succesfully exploited in the recent years for crop phenology monitoring. Space-borne radar systems offer different options in terms of polarimetric mode, ensuring a consistent acquisition schedule with a dense temporal sampling throughout the season.

This talk will provide an overview on crop phenology monitoring with multi-temporal PolSAR measurements. Polarimetric approaches to extract useful information on phenological stages will be discussed as well as phenology retrieval techniques, from classification methods to more recent dynamic strategies.

Bio

Lucio Mascolo received the Ph.D. degree in “Electronic and Information Engineering” (curriculum electromagnetic fields) from the Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy, in 2015. His main research interests include electromagnetic modeling of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) measurements and their application in agriculture monitoring. Since 2025 he is with the Electromagnetics and Remote Sensing (ERS) group, at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, Italy. Previously, he carried out his research in Spain, where he joined the Global Change Unit at the University of Valencia, and the Signals, Systems and Telecommunicaion Group, at University of Alicante, in 2023 and 2020, respectively; at Digital Content Analysis Technology (DCAT), U.K., from 2019 to 2020; at SarVision, The Netherlands, from 2016 to 2018; and at the University Parthenope’s ERS group, from 2015 to 2016.