Classification of Crop Lands over Northern Mongolia Using Multi-Temporal Landsat TM Data

Although the need of crop production has increased in Mongolia, crop cultivation is very limited because of the harsh climatic and topographic conditions. Crop lands are sparsely distributed with relatively small sizes and, therefore, it is difficult to survey the exact area of crop lands. The study aimed to find an easy and effective way of accurate classification to map crop lands in Mongolia using satellite images. To classify the crop lands over the study area in northern Mongolia, four classifications were carried out by using 1) Thematic Mapper (TM) image August 23, 2) TM image of July 6, 3) combined 12 bands of TM images of July and August, and 4) both TM images of July and August by layered classification. Wheat and potato are the major crop types and they show relatively high variation in crop conditions between July and August. On the other hands, other land cover types (forest, riparian vegetation, grassland, water and bare soil) do not show such difference between July and August. The results of four classifications clearly show that the use of multi-temporal images is essential to accurately classify the crop lands. The layered classification method, in which each class is separated by a subset of TM images, shows the highest classification accuracy (93.7%) of the crop lands. The classification accuracies are lower when we use only a single TM image of either July or August. Because of the different planting practice of potato and the growth condition of wheat, the spectral characteristics of potato and wheat cannot be fully separated from other cover types with TM image of either July or August. Further refinements on the spatial characteristics of existing crop lands may enhance the crop mapping method in Mongolia.