Automated extraction of aquaculture ponds from Sentinel-2 seasonal data in Thailand (validated)

In this paper, a new approach is presented to extract individual aquaculture ponds from seasonal Sentinel-2 10 m images and to combine different sets of pond objects extracted from different images into a single set of pond objects. The approach is demonstrated for the province of Nakhon Pathom (216,800 ha) in central Thailand that is a major shrimp farming area. Aquaculture ponds were extracted from near-cloud-free Sentinel-2 images acquired in January and June 2019 to reduce confusion with rice paddies that are typically vegetation covered in these months. The ponds extracted at different times were then combined using a multi-temporal object combination strategy.