Monitoring oil palm plantations in Malaysia

Abstract

Oil palm is recognized as the golden crop. It produces the highest oil yield among oil seed crops. Malaysia, as the world's second largest producer of palm oil, has 16 % of its lands planted with oil palms. Multisensor remote sensing plays an important role by providing relevant, timely and accurate information that can be developed into a plantation monitoring system to optimize production and sustainability. Synthetic aperture radar sensors deliver 'cloud-free' images. Optical remote sensing provides important physical parameters of the plantation using multispectral data acquisition. Both types of data are complementary and need to be exploited simultaneously to obtain a holistic view on the plantation. The research described in this paper anticipates the development of a multisensor image and data fusion system for oil palm plantation management.