Short research contribution

Remote sensing methods, in- cluding aerial photography and satellite images, could be successfully used for detecting and acreage assessing of landscape components like fallow fields. The objective of the present study was to characterize the reflectance of fallow fields situated in various soil conditions and of different age and compare them with spectral characteris- tics of main arable crops: winter rye, spring oat, winter oilseed rape, corn, potatoes and meadow. Field spectral reflectance measurements were made with the CIMEL CE313 luminancemeter and five vegetation indices (NDVI, STVI, MSI, MNDVI and GRVI) were developed by combin- ing the reflectance factors in the five wavebands (450, 550, 650, 850 and 1650 nm). In the second part of May, when seasonal biomass peak of win- ter crops and meadows occurs and spring crops partly covers the soil, significant differences were observed in the spectral properties of fallow and cultivated fields. Results showed that among the analyzed vegetation indices MSI index (R 1650 / R 850 ) was found to be the best for discriminating among the fallow fields and GRVI (R 550 /R 650 ) and NDVI ((R 850 -R 650 )/(R 850 +R 650 )), were the best dis- criminators between the fallow fields and arable crops.