A machine learning approach for agricultural parcel delineation through agglomerative segmentation

Abstract

A correct delineation of agricultural parcels is a primary requirement for any parcel-based application such as the estimate of agricultural subsidies. Currently, high-resolution remote-sensing images provide useful spatial information to delineate parcels; however, their manual processing is highly time consuming. Thus, it is necessary to create methods which allow performing this task automatically. In this work, the use of a machine-learning algorithm to delineate agricultural parcels is explored through a novel methodology. The proposed methodology combines superpixels and supervised classification in order to determine which adjacent superpixels should be merged, transforming the segmentation issue into a machine learning matter. A visual evaluation of results obtained by the methodology applied to two areas of a high-resolution satellite image of fragmented agricultural landscape points out that the use of machine-learning algorithm for this task is promising.