Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Insuring Alpine Grasslands Against Drought-Related Yield Losses by Sentinel-2 Satellite Data

Mariapina Castelli
* ORCID logo ,
Giovanni Peratoner
ORCID logo ,
Luca Pasolli
,
Giulia Molisse
,
Alexander Dovas
,
Gabriel Sicher
,
Alice Crespi
ORCID logo ,
Mattia Rossi
,
Mohammad Hussein Alasawedah
,
Evelyn Soini
,
Roberto Monsorno
,
Claudia Notarnicola
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 13 June 2023 / Approved: 14 June 2023 / Online: 14 June 2023 (04:53:50 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Castelli, M.; Peratoner, G.; Pasolli, L.; Molisse, G.; Dovas, A.; Sicher, G.; Crespi, A.; Rossi, M.; Alasawedah, M.H.; Soini, E.; Monsorno, R.; Notarnicola, C. Insuring Alpine Grasslands against Drought-Related Yield Losses Using Sentinel-2 Satellite Data. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 3542. Castelli, M.; Peratoner, G.; Pasolli, L.; Molisse, G.; Dovas, A.; Sicher, G.; Crespi, A.; Rossi, M.; Alasawedah, M.H.; Soini, E.; Monsorno, R.; Notarnicola, C. Insuring Alpine Grasslands against Drought-Related Yield Losses Using Sentinel-2 Satellite Data. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 3542.

Abstract

This work estimates yield losses due to drought events in mountain grasslands in north-eastern Italy, laying the groundwork for index-based insurance. Given the high correlation between Leaf Area Index (LAI) and grassland yield, we exploit LAI as a proxy for yield. We estimate LAI by the Sentinel-2 biophysical processor and we compare different gap-filling methods, including time-series interpolation and fusion with Sentinel-1 SAR data. We derive a Forage Production Index (FPI) as the growing season cumulate of the daily product between LAI and a meteorological water stress coefficient. Finally, we calculate the drought index as the anomaly of FPI. The validation of Sentinel-2 LAI with ground measurements showed RMSE of 0.92 [m2 m-2] and R2 of 0.81, on average over all the measurement sites. The comparison between FPI and yield showed R2 of 0.56 at the pixel scale and R2 of 0.74 at the parcel scale. The developed prototype FPI index was used at the end of the growing season of the year 2022 for calculating the payments of an experimental insurance scheme that was proposed to a group of farmers in Trentino-South Tyrol.

Keywords

drought; satellite data; Sentinel-2; grassland; mountain; insurance

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Remote Sensing

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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