Impact of COVID-19 on Harvest of Row Crops

The project wants to analyse whether the COVID-19 pandemic and associated containment measures had any disruptive effects on agricultural production and harvest patterns of row crops (maize, wheat, barley and rapeseed). Harvest dates and spatial patterns are investigated for the year 2020 with Sentinel-1 data for hundreds of thousands of parcels scattered throughout 19 European countries. The project builds on the extensive big data analysis framework of YPSILON®, which integrates phenological crop growth modelling with Sentinel-2 optical satellite data to monitor plant development and harvest progress. The radar data is added as an independent and high-resolution information source for the detection of harvest events.