Seasonal Assessment of Rice Planting and Growing Cycle in North Aceh, Indonesia: A SAM Approach on Sentinel-2 Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Observing the growing season and planting are essential to maintaining the sustainability of rice
plants and food availability in the region. Conventionally, the observation and monitoring of rice
plants are carried out manually by direct observation in the field. Those activities do indeed take
time and are costly. Therefore, the utilization of medium-resolution satellite imagery is an alternative
way to monitor the growing season of paddy fields in the rice production center of North Aceh.
North Aceh is one of the leading rice production centers in the country; monitoring the planting
season and growth cycle of paddy rice are essential aspects of maintaining rice production.
Conventionally, mapping and assessing plant growth in plant morphology can be known by
regularly monitoring every season. One way to monitor changes in the growing season for future
predictions, even though time has passed, is to use satellite imagery. This study aims to map the
area and phase level of rice plant growth in Aceh rice production centers in the North Aceh
regency. Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) on Sentinel-2 imagery to map the spatial distribution of
paddy fields in different phases of the rice growing season from 2019 to 2022. Growth parameters
were extracted with index vegetation series to evaluate the image's ability to provide information on
the rice plant growth stage from Sentinel-2 imagery. To estimate the phase rate of rice growth,
spectral angle mapper analysis on Sentinel-2 images has been piloted to assist in estimating the
growth phase in each season and its spatial distribution. The mapping of rice plants' growing season
and growth showed differences in area distribution for the districts observed in the wet, vegetative,
generative, and dry fallow phases in 2022. SAM algorithms produced different data on the growth
phase of rice plants.
Keywords: Paddy-Rice, Growing Cycle, SAM, Sentinel-2 Imagery