The Soft and Hard Land Use /Cover Change Detection（ SHLUCD） was proposed to express the variation of crop phenology effectively

which will help identifying the target crop both in discretely and continuously changed regions（ discrete region is in an area that was totally changed into crop and non-crop region; the continuously changed region is in a transitional area where part of the target crop is changed into crop）. The method was applied in a sub-region of Beijing. Two HJ-1 CCD images that were utilized by Hard Land Use / Cover Change Detection（ HLUCD）

Soft Land Use / Cover Change Detection（ SLUCD）

and SHLUCD to extract winter wheat area in the study area; the images were acquired on October 6

2011（ T1） and April 16

2012（ T2） represent the period of sowing and jointing

respectively. The results showed that the crop distribution derived from the SHLUCD can get a higher accuracy than that from HLUCD and SLUCD. The crop distribution derived from the SHLUCD also performs better in scale evaluation than that derived from other methods; the former has lower RMSEs and bias and higher R2value. The RMSEs of SHLUCD

HLUCD

and SLUCD are in the ranges of 0. 14 to 0. 07

0. 15 to 0. 07

and 0. 16 to 0. 08

respectively; the biases of SHLUCD

HLUCD

and SLUCD are approximately- 0. 0008

- 0. 007

and 0. 014

respectively; the R2values of SHLUCD

HLUCD

and SLUCD are in the ranges of 0. 68 to 0. 86

0. 62 to 0. 86

and 0. 60 to 0. 86

respectively. Accuracy assessment was also applied in abruptly changed area

continuously changed area and non-crop area respectively. It shows that the accuracy assessment results of SHLUCD are similar to that from the best method in all three regions. Therefore

our method is more flexible and suitable in crop mapping. The winter wheat mapping in discrete and continuously changed regions can be identified by the status of land use / cover change and land change scope through SHLUCD

respectively. Moreover

SHLUCD provides a new way for crop distribution mapping based on change detection.