The Challenge

• RMH was tasked by EKNA Services, Inc. to identify agricultural uses for an assessment of ditch irrigation systems throughout the state of Hawaii.

• Several crops are spectrally independent, but positive identification is unclear without considerable ground assessment.

RMH Solution 

• We ran semi-automated, object based classifications of multispectral satellite imagery from WorldView-2, acquired in 2011.

• We conducted aerial surveys in 2014 to produce natural color ortho-mosaics at 4cm GSD, then used visual interpretation to identify crops and land use.

Results

• Final maps of crop types derived from satellite imagery were validated using aerial imagery as virtual groundtruthing