Machine learning-based detection of irrigation in Vojvodina (Serbia) using Sentinel-2 data

With rapid population growth and the high influence of climate change on agricultural productivity, providing enough food is the main challenge in the 21st century. Irrigation, as a hydrological artificial process, has an indispensable role in achieving that goal. However, high pressure and demand on water resources could lead to serious problems in water consumption. Knowing information about the spatial distribution of irrigation parcels is essential to many aspects of Earth system science and global change research. To extract this knowledge for the main agricultural region in Serbia located in the moderate continental area, we utilized optical satellite Sentinel-2 data and collected ground truth data needed to train the machine learning model. Both satellite imagery and ground truth data were collected for the three most irrigated crops, maize, soybean, and sugar beet during 3 years (2020–2022) characterized by different weather conditions. This data was then used for training the Random Forest-based models, separately for each crop type, differentiating irrigated and rainfed crops on the parcel level. Finally, the models were run for the whole territory of Vojvodina generating 10 m resolution maps of irrigated three crops of interest. With overall accuracy for crops per year (2020: 0.76; 2021: 0.78; 2022: 0.84) results showed that this method could be successfully used for detecting the irrigation of three crops of interest. This was confirmed by validation with the national dataset from Public Water Management Company “Vode Vojvodine” which revealed that classification maps had an accuracy of 76%. These maps further allow us to understand the spatial dynamics of the most important irrigated crops and can serve for the improvement of sustainable agricultural water management.