High-resolution distribution maps of single-season rice in China from 2017 to 2022

Abstract

Paddy rice is the second-largest grain crop in China and plays an important role in ensuring global food security. However, there is no high-resolution map of rice covering all of China. This study developed a new rice-mapping method by combining optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images in cloudy areas based on the time-weighted dynamic time warping (TWDTW) method and produced distribution maps of single-season rice in 21 provincial administrative regions of China from 2017 to 2022 at a 10 or 20m resolution. The accuracy was examined using 108195 survey samples and county-level statistical data. On average, the user's, producer's, and overall accuracy values over all investigated provincial administrative regions were 73.08%, 82.81%, and 85.23%, respectively. Compared with the statistical data from 2017 to 2019, the distribution maps explained 83% of the spatial variation of county-level planting areas on average. The distribution maps can be obtained at 10.57760/sciencedb.06963 (Shen et al., 2023).