Estimation of the area under cultivation of Wheat by Using of Landsat 8 Satellite Images (Case Study: Ardabil Province)

Attention to Ardabil province is one of the important centers of wheat cultivation, determining the level of cultivation will be of particular importance in economic and political planning and can ensure the country's food security, but in the past, most traditional methods, such as field measurement, etc., have been used to determine the level of crop cultivation, which has many errors, In this study, we tried to use Landsat 8 satellite imagery, Vegetation Indices (NDVI, SAVI, DVI, GVI, IPVI, RVI), Principal components analysis (PCI), Optimum Index Factor (OIF), and classification algorithm to estimate the maximum probability of wheat cultivation area in the study area. Based on the results of main components analysis, more than 99% of data variances were explained in three main components and the best color combination of the OIF index was determined by bands 5, 6, and 7 with a numerical value of 8383.73. Also, the results showed that wheat cultivars under cultivar 94-95 in the studied area with kappa coefficient is 0.87 and the general accuracy of 95.2% were 59203.07 hectares and According to the statistics of agricultural Jahad official in Ardebil province, which is about 62480.21 hectares, In other words, the difference is 5.24% or about 3277.14 hectares which seem to be acceptable. Therefore, it can generally be concluded that Landsat 8 images, Principal components analysis, and Optimum Index Factor are highly effective in determining the level of wheat cultivation.