Analysis of land surface temperature and soil moisture index for agricultural soil blocks by using remote sensing data in South Bohemia region

Abstract

Czech Republic, former Czechoslovakia, underwent the process of so called collectivization, after WWII. Individual ownership of land was converted to the state ownership of property, supported by uniting agricultural land parcels. Thus, agricultural soil blocks have grown and landscape elements such as shrubberies, balks, solitary trees or wetlands fulfilling many ecological functions were destroyed. These landscape elements are very important in reducing soil erosion and soil degradation, among others. As a consequence, the Czech Republic has the largest land parcel size of approximately 96 ha, while the average land parcel size is 26 ha in Europe. EU motivates farmers to decrease the negative impact of agriculture by Cross Compliance involving good agriculture and environmental condition (GAEC) standards. GAEC 7d standard prevents to plant single crop on agricultural land parcels larger than 30 ha. Czech Ministry of Agriculture applied this standard since 2020. In this thesis, changes on soil water and temperature regime were tested after first year of GAEC 7d application by using remote sensing data in Ceske Budejovice region in the Czech Republic on area of 5329.84 km2. Mono-Window Algorithm that includes atmospheric transmittance and atmospheric avarage air temperature were applied as a practical method in the study to obtain surface temperature values. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Soil Moisture Index (SMI) were calculated by using Landsat-8 open source satellite data to understand vegetation density, temperature regime and soil water content in study area in June, 2019 and 2020. The statistical relationship between the indices was analysed and changes in SMI representing soil water content and LST representing ground temperature were compared for both years. After constraining a continuous area of single crop up to 30 ha in 2020 were observed changes in the indices indicating changes in ladscape microclimate. The accuracy assessment of Landsat-8 LST data was checked using MODIS daily 1 km LST. The RMSD of the LST values for 2019 and 2020 were found ±2.98K and ±2.80K, respectively.