Building a Data Set over 12 Globally Distributed Sites to Support the Development of Agriculture Monitoring Applications with Sentinel-2

Developing better agricultural monitoring capabilities based on Earth Observation data is critical for strengthening food production information and market transparency. The Sentinel-2 mission has the optimal capacity for regional to global agriculture monitoring in terms of resolution (10-20 meter), revisit frequency (five days) and coverage (global). In this context, the European Space Agency launched in 2014 the Sentinel-2 for Agriculture project, which aims to prepare the exploitation of Sentinel-2 data for agriculture monitoring through the development of open source processing chains for relevant products. The project generated an unprecedented dataset, made of Sentinel-2 like time series and in situ data acquired in 2013 over 12 globally distributed sites. Earth Observation time series were mostly built on the SPOT4 (Take 5) data set, which was specifically designed to simulate Sentinel-2. They also included Landsat 8 and RapidEye imagery as complementary data sources. Images were pre-processed to Level 2A and the quality of the resulting time series was assessed. In situ data about cropland, crop type and biophysical variables were shared by site managers, most of them belonging to the Joint Experiment for Crop Assessment and Monitoring network. This data set allowed testing and comparing across sites the methodologies that will be at the core of the future Sentinel-2 for Agriculture system.