# Fine-Scale (10 m) Dynamics of Smallholder Farming through COVID-19 in Eastern Thailand  
[PERSON]  
1 Laboratory for Remote Sensing and Environmental Change (LRSEC), Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA 12 Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA 23 Caltech, Hammelman  
2 Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA 23 Caltech, [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (U.  
infection or quarantine [2], shortages of cultivation supplies [3], restricted transportation and trade [4; 5], and disruptions to retail business [6]. However, the long-term impact of the crisis on agricultural systems remains to be well understood. In particular, crop cultivation is an integral part of the agricultural supply chain. While the pandemic apparently disrupted cultivation temporarily, it is unclear whether there may be a slow recovery or a permanent change in the cultivation landscape (e.g., crop acreage and types) during and after the pandemic. Understanding the landscape change of crop cultivation is especially critical for Thailand, whose agricultural sector contributed over 8% to the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), employed about 30% of the total workforce, and played a key role in providing financial support to 6.4 million households [7]. Thailand's agriculture not only affects its domestic economy but also has a major influence on the global market. As a world-leading food exporter, Thailand's trade in agricultural products totaled 1.55 trillion baht (~43 billion USD) in 2022, with major markets including China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members [8]. Thailand is located in the Indo-Burmese Region, a global hotspot of biodiversity [9]. A variety of crops are extensively cultivated in the country, including rice, rubber, durian, eucalyptus, oil palm, pineapple, sugarcane, cassava, mangosteen, and coconut. Particularly, durian (_Durio zibethinus_), known as the 'king of fruits,' has become one of Thailand's most important exports. Even during the pandemic, Thailand reported exporting $2.2 billion U.S. dollars' worth of durian to China in 2020, a rise of 47% from the previous year [10]. However, the pandemic has had a lasting effect on the country's agricultural sector, creating a shortage of agricultural laborers, particularly migrant workers and workers who are members of minority ethnic groups, which will take time to recover to pre-crisis levels [11]. In northern Thailand, COVID-19 dramatically increased the cost of planting by 57.4% and the cost of agrochemicals and fertilizers by 69.9% [12]. To cope with such challenges, farmers in Thailand have started to adopt new farming technologies or skills to improve crop yield and resort to new business strategies, such as transitioning from onsite markets to e-commerce [13]. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of the spatiotemporal change patterns of crop cultivation through the pandemic. Policymakers and stakeholders have primarily relied on field surveys to gain such information, which is time-consuming and lacks spatiotemporal details to inform effective decision-making. To date, the post-pandemic recovery of Thailand's agriculture remains to be well investigated. For example, have major crops recovered from the adverse effects of the pandemic? Has there been a shift in cultivation from one crop type to another? Remote sensing has gained popularity in crop mapping over the past few decades. Particularly after Landsat opened its data archive to all users at no charge on 21 April 2008 [14], there has been a substantial number of studies capitalizing on satellite image time series to monitor the spatial distribution of crop cultivation. Recent sensor systems offer an even higher spatial resolution than Landsat, such as Sentinel-2, with 10 m visible and near-infrared image bands.