Evaluación de los datos del sensor ASTER para estimar la superficie cultivada y los niveles de producción de ca？a de azúcar en Tucumán, Argentina

in this work, data obtained by visible near infrared (vnir) bands 2 and 3 and short wave infrared (swir) subsystem (band 4) of the aster sensor, were evaluated in terms of their potential use in estimating planted surface and production levels of a sugarcane growing area in chicligasta, province of tucumán, argentina. the multiespectral supervised classification methodology was applied. the results were compared with the ones obtained by applying the same methodology to data provided by bands 3, 4 and 5 of landsat 5 satellite tm sensor. statistical analysis of the available information demonstrated that data supplied by vnir bands 2 and 3 of the aster sensor allow discriminating sugarcane planted area and production levels in the region under observation. the statistical comparison of these results with the ones obtained with landsat tm sensor indicated that band 3 of aster and band 4 of landsat have a higher significance than bands 2 and 3 of both sensors for discriminating production levels. moreover, by comparing them, it was possible to observe that band 3 of aster exhibited a better behaviour than band 4 of landsat. these results show that the aster sensor constitutes a feasible alternative to identify and quantify sugarcane production.