scholarly journals Combining UAV-Based Vegetation Indices and Image Classification to Estimate Flower Number in Oilseed Rape

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Wan ◽  
Yijian Li ◽  
Haiyan Cen ◽  
Jiangpeng Zhu ◽  
Wenxin Yin ◽  
...  

Remote estimation of flower number in oilseed rape under different nitrogen (N) treatments is imperative in precision agriculture and field remote sensing, which can help to predict the yield of oilseed rape. In this study, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with Red Green Blue (RGB) and multispectral cameras was used to acquire a series of field images at the flowering stage, and the flower number was manually counted as a reference. Images of the rape field were first classified using K-means method based on Commission Internationale de l’Éclairage (CIE) L*a*b* space, and the result showed that classified flower coverage area (FCA) possessed a high correlation with the flower number (r2 = 0.89). The relationships between ten commonly used vegetation indices (VIs) extracted from UAV-based RGB and multispectral images and the flower number were investigated, and the VIs of Normalized Green Red Difference Index (NGRDI), Red Green Ratio Index (RGRI) and Modified Green Red Vegetation Index (MGRVI) exhibited the highest correlation to the flower number with the absolute correlation coefficient (r) of 0.91. Random forest (RF) model was developed to predict the flower number, and a good performance was achieved with all UAV variables (r2 = 0.93 and RMSEP = 16.18), while the optimal subset regression (OSR) model was further proposed to simplify the RF model, and a better result with r2 = 0.95 and RMSEP = 14.13 was obtained with the variable combination of RGRI, normalized difference spectral index (NDSI (944, 758)) and FCA. Our findings suggest that combining VIs and image classification from UAV-based RGB and multispectral images possesses the potential of estimating flower number in oilseed rape.

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (23) ◽  
pp. 6732
Author(s):  
Haixia Qi ◽  
Bingyu Zhu ◽  
Zeyu Wu ◽  
Yu Liang ◽  
Jianwen Li ◽  
...  

Leaf area index (LAI) is used to predict crop yield, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide new ways to monitor LAI. In this study, we used a fixed-wing UAV with multispectral cameras for remote sensing monitoring. We conducted field experiments with two peanut varieties at different planting densities to estimate LAI from multispectral images and establish a high-precision LAI prediction model. We used eight vegetation indices (VIs) and developed simple regression and artificial neural network (BPN) models for LAI and spectral VIs. The empirical model was calibrated to estimate peanut LAI, and the best model was selected from the coefficient of determination and root mean square error. The red (660 nm) and near-infrared (790 nm) bands effectively predicted peanut LAI, and LAI increased with planting density. The predictive accuracy of the multiple regression model was higher than that of the single linear regression models, and the correlations between Modified Red-Edge Simple Ratio Index (MSR), Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and LAI were higher than the other indices. The combined VI BPN model was more accurate than the single VI BPN model, and the BPN model accuracy was higher. Planting density affects peanut LAI, and reflectance-based vegetation indices can help predict LAI.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
pp. 5540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Casamitjana ◽  
Maria C. Torres-Madroñero ◽  
Jaime Bernal-Riobo ◽  
Diego Varga

Surface soil moisture is an important hydrological parameter in agricultural areas. Periodic measurements in tropical mountain environments are poorly representative of larger areas, while satellite resolution is too coarse to be effective in these topographically varied landscapes, making spatial resolution an important parameter to consider. The Las Palmas catchment area near Medellin in Colombia is a vital water reservoir that stores considerable amounts of water in its andosol. In this tropical Andean setting, we use an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with multispectral (visible, near infrared) sensors to determine the correlation of three agricultural land uses (potatoes, bare soil, and pasture) with surface soil moisture. Four vegetation indices (the perpendicular drought index, PDI; the normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI; the normalized difference water index, NDWI, and the soil-adjusted vegetation index, SAVI) were applied to UAV imagery and a 3 m resolution to estimate surface soil moisture through calibration with in situ field measurements. The results showed that on bare soil, the indices that best fit the soil moisture results are NDVI, NDWI and PDI on a detailed scale, whereas on potatoes crops, the NDWI is the index that correlates significantly with soil moisture, irrespective of the scale. Multispectral images and vegetation indices provide good soil moisture understanding in tropical mountain environments, with 3 m remote sensing images which are shown to be a good alternative to soil moisture analysis on pastures using the NDVI and UAV images for bare soil and potatoes.


2020 ◽  
pp. paper49-1-paper49-12
Author(s):  
Evgeniy Trubakov ◽  
Olga Trubakova

Rational use of natural resources and control over their recovery, as well as over destruction due to natural and technogenic causes, is currently one of the most urgent problems of the humanity. Forests are no exception. Multispectral images from Earth’s satellites are most often used for monitoring changes in forest planting. This is due to the fact that merging images taken in certain spectra makes it possible to recognize vegetation containing chlorophyll quite well. It also allows to detect changes in the level of chlorophyll, which shows the differences between healthy and damaged plants. Large areas of planted forests create the need to process huge amounts of data, which is difficult to do manually. One of the most important stages of image processing is the classification of objects in these images. This paper deals with various classification methods used to solve the problem of classifying images of remote sensing of the Earth. As a result, it was decided to evaluate the accuracy of classification methods on various vegetation indices. In the course of the study, the evaluation algorithm was determined, as well as one of the options for analyzing the results obtained. Conclusions were made about the work of classification methods on different vegetation indices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hengqian Zhao ◽  
Chenghai Yang ◽  
Wei Guo ◽  
Lifu Zhang ◽  
Dongyan Zhang

The timely monitoring of crop disease development is very important for precision agriculture applications. Remote sensing-based vegetation indices (VIs) can be good indicators of crop disease severity, but current methods are mainly dependent on manual ground survey results. Based on VI normalization, an automated crop disease severity grading method without the use of ground surveys was proposed in this study. This technique was applied to two cotton fields infested with different levels of cotton root rot in south Texas in the United States, where airborne hyperspectral imagery was collected. Six typical VIs were calculated from the hyperspectral imagery and their histograms indicated that VI normalization could eliminate the influences of variable field conditions and the VI value range variations, allowing a potentially broader scope of application. According to the analysis of the obtained results from the spectral dimension, spatial dimension and descriptive statistics, the disease grading results were in general agreement with previous ground survey results, proving the validity of the disease severity grading method. Although satisfactory results could be achieved from different types of VI, there is still room for further improvement through the exploration of more VIs. With the advantages of independence of ground surveys and potential universal applicability, the newly proposed crop disease grading method will be of great significance for crop disease monitoring over large geographical areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Chufeng Wang ◽  
Chenghai Yang ◽  
Tianjin Xie ◽  
Zhao Jiang ◽  
...  

The spatial resolution of in situ unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) multispectral images has a crucial effect on crop growth monitoring and image acquisition efficiency. However, existing studies about optimal spatial resolution for crop monitoring are mainly based on resampled images. Therefore, the resampled spatial resolution in these studies might not be applicable to in situ UAV images. In order to obtain optimal spatial resolution of in situ UAV multispectral images for crop growth monitoring, a RedEdge Micasense 3 camera was installed onto a DJI M600 UAV flying at different heights of 22, 29, 44, 88, and 176m to capture images of seedling rapeseed with ground sampling distances (GSD) of 1.35, 1.69, 2.61, 5.73, and 11.61 cm, respectively. Meanwhile, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) measured by a GreenSeeker (GS-NDVI) and leaf area index (LAI) were collected to evaluate the performance of nine vegetation indices (VIs) and VI*plant height (PH) at different GSDs for rapeseed growth monitoring. The results showed that the normalized difference red edge index (NDRE) had a better performance for estimating GS-NDVI (R2 = 0.812) and LAI (R2 = 0.717), compared with other VIs. Moreover, when GSD was less than 2.61 cm, the NDRE*PH derived from in situ UAV images outperformed the NDRE for LAI estimation (R2 = 0.757). At oversized GSD (≥5.73 cm), imprecise PH information and a large heterogeneity within the pixel (revealed by semi-variogram analysis) resulted in a large random error for LAI estimation by NDRE*PH. Furthermore, the image collection and processing time at 1.35 cm GSD was about three times as long as that at 2.61 cm. The result of this study suggested that NDRE*PH from UAV multispectral images with a spatial resolution around 2.61 cm could be a preferential selection for seedling rapeseed growth monitoring, while NDRE alone might have a better performance for low spatial resolution images.


2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Maciej Dzieszko ◽  
Piotr Dzieszko ◽  
Sławomir Królewicz

Abstract . Knowledge of how land cover has changed over time improve assessments of the changes in the future. Wide availability of remote sensed data and relatively low cost of their acquisition make them very attractive data source for Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The main goal of this paper is to prepare, run and evaluate image classification using a block of raw aerial images obtained from Digital Mapping Camera (DMC). Classification was preceded by preparation of raw images. It contained geometric and radiometric correction of every image in block. Initial images processing lead to compensate their brightness differences. It was obtained by calculating two vegetation indices: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Green Normalized Vegetation Index (gNDVI). These vegetation indices were the foundation of image classification. PCI Geomatics Geomatica 10.2 and Microimages TNT Mips software platforms were used for this purpose.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela da Silva Flores ◽  
Willian Meniti Paschoalete ◽  
Fabio Henrique Rojo Baio ◽  
Cid Naudi Silva Campos ◽  
Ariane de Andréa Pantaleão ◽  
...  

Precision agriculture is a set of techniques that assist the monitoring of the agronomic performance of the maize crop by using vegetation indices. This study aimed to verify the relationship between vegetation indices, plant height, leaf N content, and grain yield of three maize varieties, grown under high and low N as topdressing. The experiment was carried out at the Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa Agropecuária de Chapadão (Fundação Chapadão), located in the municipality of Chapadão do Sul, during the 2017/2018 season. The experiment consisted of a randomized block design with four replications, arranged in a 3x2 split-plot scheme. The first factor (plots) corresponded to three open-pollinated maize varieties (BRS 4103, BRS Gorotuba, and SCS 154), and the second factor (subplots) consisted of two N rates applied as topdressing (80 and 160 kg- 1). All the evaluated variables showed varieties x N interaction. Vegetation indices in maize varieties were influenced by the N rate applied as topdressing. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Soil-adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) showed a higher correlation with plant height. At the same time, Normalized Difference Red Edge (NDRE) had a stronger association with leaf N content.


Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1842
Author(s):  
Ewa Panek ◽  
Dariusz Gozdowski ◽  
Michał Stępień ◽  
Stanisław Samborski ◽  
Dominik Ruciński ◽  
...  

The aims of this study were to: (i) evaluate the relationships between vegetation indices (VIs) derived from Sentinel-2 imagery and grain yield (GY) and the number of spikes per square meter (SN) of winter wheat and triticale; (ii) determine the dates and plant growth stages when the above relationships were the strongest at individual field scale, thus allowing for accurate yield prediction. Observations of GY and SN were performed at harvest on six fields (three locations in two seasons: 2017 and 2018) in three regions of Poland, i.e., northeastern (A—Brożówka), central (B—Zdziechów) and southeastern Poland (C—Kryłów). Vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), modified SAVI (mSAVI), modified SAVI 2 (mSAVI2), Infrared Percentage Vegetation Index (IPVI), Global Environmental Monitoring Index (GEMI), and Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI)) calculated for sampling points from mid-March until mid-July, covering within-field soil and topographical variability, were included in the analysis. Depending on the location, the highest correlation coefficients (of about 0.6–0.9) for most of VIs with GY and SN were obtained about 4–6 weeks before harvest (from the beginning of shooting to milk maturity). Therefore, satellite-derived VIs are useful for the prediction of within-field cereal GY as well as SN variability. Information on GY, predicted together with the results for soil nutrient availability, is the basis for the formulation of variable fertilize rates in precision agriculture. All examined VIs were similarly correlated with GY and SN via the commonly used NDVI. The increase in NDVI by 0.1 unit was related to an average increase in GY by about 2 t ha−1.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonggeun Song ◽  
Kyunghun Park

In this study, aquatic plants in a small reservoir were detected using multispectral UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) imagery and various vegetation indices. A Firefly UAV, which has both fixed-wing and rotary-wing flight modes, was flown over the study site four times. A RedEdge camera was mounted on the UAV to acquire multispectral images. These images were used to analyze the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), ENDVI (Enhance Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), NDREI (Normalized Difference RedEdge Index), NGRDI (Normalized Green-Red Difference Index), and GNDVI (Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). As for multispectral characteristics, waterside plants showed the highest reflectance in Rnir, while floating plants had a higher reflectance in Rre. During the hottest season (on 25 June), the vegetation indices were the highest, and the habitat expanded near the edge of the reservoir. Among the vegetation indices, NDVI was the highest and NGRDI was the lowest. In particular, NGRDI had a higher value on the water surface and was not useful for detecting aquatic plants. NDVI and GNDVI, which showed the clearest difference between aquatic plants and water surface, were determined to be the most effective vegetation indices for detecting aquatic plants. Accordingly, the vegetation indices using multispectral UAV imagery turned out to be effective for detecting aquatic plants. A further study will be accompanied by a field survey in order to acquire and analyze more accurate imagery information.


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