Remote Sensing-Based Extraction and Analysis of Temporal and Spatial Variations of Winter Wheat Planting Areas in the Henan Province of China

The aim of this study is to assess the winter wheat planting (WWP) area in Henan Province and investigate its temporal and spatial variations by using remote sensing (RS) technology. A spectral angle mapper (SAM) was adopted to identify the WWP area of each district divided by the hierarchical grades of land surface drought index during 2001-2015. The results obtained show the expediency of monitoring the WWP areas at the regional scale via drought regionalization, which provides a goodness-of-fit R(2) =0.933, a mean relative error MRE=49,118 ha, and an overall accuracy up to 90.24%. The major WWP areas in Henan Province were located in Zhoukou, Zhumadian, Shangqiu, Nanyang, and Xinxiang prefecture-level cities. Two representative sites are mountainous districts, with rich water resources or high urbanization rate, which have a low probability of WWP. Both sites exhibited a strongly manifested evolution of WWP areas, which could be attributed to extremely cold weather conditions, crop alternation, the popularization of new varieties, and fast expansion of built-up areas. The results of this study are instrumental in the analysis of crop planting variation characteristics, which should be taken into account in the further decision-making process related to the crop planting strategies.