## 1 Introduction  
Agriculture is directly and indirectly the world's main source of food supply [1]. With the rising demand for food products due to global population growth, and also the direct impact of climate change on food production in many areas, food security is again becoming a crucial issue for many countries. The agricultural output of each region very much depends on its climate and the related parameters [2]. One of the most important determinants of agricultural production efficiency and output and consequently food security in a region is people's understanding of the region's climatic characteristics and their impact on the yield of different crops. This issue is especially important in rainfed farming. Rainfed farming is a type of agriculture in which crops are almost entirely irrigated by rainfall, which makes it extremely dependent on climatic conditions [3]. Legumes are a family of protein-rich agricultural products that are not only essential for a healthy diet, but also serve as an important source of income for millions of families who grow them alongside other crops. Farming legumes is also known to improve soil nitrogen levels, which plays an important role in sustainable production [4]. Chickpea (_Cicer arietinum_ L.) is a drought-resistant plant that grows well in arid and semi-arid areas. This plant can tolerate not only high temperatures but also low temperatures to some extent [5], which makes it a very good option for rainfed farms. With a total output of 271,487 tons (2017), Iran is the world's ninth-largest producer of chickpea after the United States [6]. Almost 80% of Iranian chickpeas are produced in four provinces: Kermanshah, Lorestan, Kurdistan, and West Azerbaijan. Accounting for nearly 25.2% of the country's total chickpea production, Kermanshah province is the largest producer of chickpea in Iran. More than 80% of Kermanshah's chickpeas are produced in rainfed farms, which have an average yield of 456 kg/hectare [7]. Kermanshah has a semi-arid mountainous climate [8], which is perfect for rainfed chickpea farming. However, in recent years, the province has struggled with water scarcity issues due to the effects of climate change, especially prolonged dry spells and droughts, and the consequent overexploitation of groundwater resources [9]. Allowing agriculture to expand beyond the region's ecological and environmental capacities has adverse consequences--such as soil erosion, desertification, land pollution, and environmental degradation--which will ultimately result in the destruction of the region's natural resources and the decline of its agricultural output; trends that will actually move the region away from sustainable development [10]. Any information about the vegetation cover of a region and how it is impacted by climatic variables can substantially benefit the management of agricultural yield in that region [11]. However, the traditional methods of gathering information about climate and vegetation cover could be not only time-consuming but also inaccurate. Today, such information can be collected more easily by using remote sensing technologies to monitor vegetation and climate variables and track their temporal and spatial changes on regional and global scales. Indeed, these technologies can offer an expansive and integrated view of any area with extremely high accuracy. By combining the remote sensing data with climatic measurements, one can create a real-time map of crop characteristics, which can be used in the quantification of annual net outputs on different scales and also the differentiation of vegetation covers on continental and regional scales, which could be highly valuable for effective land management [12; 13]. Given the massive volume of these data (spatial and temporal) which grow with every second, many machine learning methods have been developed to take advantage of emerging computer hardware and their computing power in processing these data.