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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">AGILE-GISS</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>AGILE: GIScience Series</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">AGILE-GISS</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">AGILE GIScience Ser.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2700-8150</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/agile-giss-7-30-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Monitoring of pesticide treatment effects on crops using optical and SAR satellite remote sensing</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kuznecova</surname>
<given-names>Tatjana</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Garcia Chapeton</surname>
<given-names>Gustavo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Research group Technologies for Criminal Investigations, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede, Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Research group Data Management and Biometrics, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>7</volume>
<elocation-id>30</elocation-id>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Tatjana Kuznecova</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/30/2026/agile-giss-7-30-2026.html">This article is available from https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/30/2026/agile-giss-7-30-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/30/2026/agile-giss-7-30-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/7/30/2026/agile-giss-7-30-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Agricultural chemicals pose increasing risks to soil, water and living organisms. Remote sensing (RS) offers potential to monitor vegetation responses to chemical treatments, yet most existing studies rely on limited samples, optical data only, or controlled experiments. This study explores a plot-level methodology for detecting vegetation responses to herbicide applications in real-world conditions by integrating optical and radar satellite data with pesticide treatment records.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Crop plot geometries and Pesticide Use Reports (PUR) from Kern County, California, served as basis for analysis of RS indices derived from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Sentinel-2 Multispectral (MS) imagery. The analysis focuses on treatments in potato crops, where a manually enriched pesticide dataset is used to group treatment events by their likely purpose. Two herbicide application scenarios - pre-emergent weed control and vine desiccation - were assessed using slope (1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; derivative) and slope-change (2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; derivative) analysis applied to time series of optical and radar indices before and after treatments.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Results show distinct slope and slope-change patterns for both scenarios. Pre-emergent applications exhibit neutral to slightly positive post-treatment trends, while desiccation events are associated with pronounced negative slope changes shortly after treatment. Radar-based metric shows a delayed response compared to optical indices, consistent with differences in spectral and structural vegetation changes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The findings demonstrate the potential of combining optical and SAR time series with treatment records for large-scale, plot-level assessment of pesticide-related vegetation dynamics. The paper outlines methodological starting points for introducing phenological alignment and control plots to improve causal inference in future work.</p>
</abstract>
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