Estimation of paddy area in Thanjavur district using sentinel-2 satellite data

Abstract

Paddy cultivation plays a crucial role in food security and agricultural sustainability, particularly in regions like Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, known as the "Rice Bowl of India." This study employs Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to assess paddy cultivation in Thanjavur district, leveraging remote sensing and GIS techniques. Ground truth data were integrated for validation, ensuring reliable results. The findings indicate a high accuracy in paddy area estimation, demonstrating the efficacy of Sentinel-2 data in large-scale agricultural assessments. The district-wide paddy area was estimated to be 22246.01 hectares, with notable variations in distribution across the 14 blocks. The classification accuracy, assessed through confusion matrix achieved a commendable overall accuracy of 90.9%, indicating that optical remote sensing techniques provide reliable results for large-scale agricultural monitoring.