Remote sensing techniques applied to the coconut palm - an overview

Most of the information was obtained from Dr Gaëlle Viennois, from Join Research Unit AMAP, Cirad.

Some Qgis Toolbox allows to conduct remote sensing analysis, but they are not often used in CIRAD. At Cirad, researchers are mainly using commercial (and quite expensive) dedicated software, that works well on recent laptops with sufficient RAM (8 gigabytes), and quite large harddisk: each satellite image generally need 2-3 gigabytes. The software are:

ENVI Excellis - About 4000 USD once (windows 32 ou 64) mobile computer. one image 2-3 gigas.
E-cognition (trimble) - Payant classification d'objet

Multispectral images are needed to identify and count coconut palms. To get the satellite images:

Spot isis: one image costs about 100 USD: medium quality, multispectral image with resolution 6m ; panchromatic image with resolution 2m.

E-geos image: good quality, multispectral image with resolution 2m ; panchromatic 50 cm. Need to buy a minimum of 100 km2; when the image is already available, it cost 20-25 USD per km2; when the image needs to be acquired, the price is approximative doubled.

Dedicated Training is organized at "Maison de la Téledétection" Montpellier France.

Documents to download:

Komba Mayossa, P. C., Coppens d’Eeckenbrugge, G., Borne, F., Gadal, S., & Viennois, G. Developing a method to map coconut agrosystems from high-resolution satellite images.

Teina, R. (2009). Caractérisation de la cocoteraie des Tuamotu à partir d'images satellites à très haute résolution spatiale (Doctoral dissertation, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI).


Teina, R., Béréziat, D., Stoll, B., & Chabrier, S. (2008, July). Toward a global Tuamotu archipelago coconut trees sensing using high resolution optical data. In Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International (Vol. 2, pp. II-797). IEEE.