Application of Drone Technologies in Surface Water Resources Monitoring and Assessment: A Systematic Review of Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities in the Global South (original) (raw)

Water Management Using Drones and Satellites in Agriculture

Water

This document intends to be a presentation of the Special Issue “Water Management Using Drones and Satellites in Agriculture”. The objective of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of recent advances in the methodology of using remote sensing techniques for managing water in agricultural systems. Its eight peer-reviewed articles focus on three topics: new equipment for characterizing water bodies, development of satellite-based technologies for determining crop water requirements in order to enhance irrigation efficiency, and monitoring crop water status through proximal and remote sensing. Overall, these contributions explore new solutions for improving irrigation management and an efficient assessment of crop water needs, being of great value for both researchers and advisors.

Prospects of Improving Agricultural and Water Productivity through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Agriculture

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are an alternative to costly and time-consuming traditional methods to improve agricultural water management and crop productivity through the acquisition, processing, and analyses of high-resolution spatial and temporal crop data at field scale. UAVs mounted with multispectral and thermal cameras facilitate the monitoring of crops throughout the crop growing cycle, allowing for timely detection and intervention in case of any anomalies. The use of UAVs in smallholder agriculture is poised to ensure food security at household level and improve agricultural water management in developing countries. This review synthesises the use of UAVs in smallholder agriculture in the smallholder agriculture sector in developing countries. The review highlights the role of UAV derived normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) in assessing crop health, evapotranspiration, water stress and disaster risk reduction. The focus is to provide more accurate statistics o...

Airborne Drones for Water Quality Mapping in Inland, Transitional and Coastal Waters—MapEO Water Data Processing and Validation

Remote Sensing

Using airborne drones to monitor water quality in inland, transitional or coastal surface waters is an emerging research field. Airborne drones can fly under clouds at preferred times, capturing data at cm resolution, filling a significant gap between existing in situ, airborne and satellite remote sensing capabilities. Suitable drones and lightweight cameras are readily available on the market, whereas deriving water quality products from the captured image is not straightforward; vignetting effects, georeferencing, the dynamic nature and high light absorption efficiency of water, sun glint and sky glint effects require careful data processing. This paper presents the data processing workflow behind MapEO water, an end-to-end cloud-based solution that deals with the complexities of observing water surfaces and retrieves water-leaving reflectance and water quality products like turbidity and chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration. MapEO water supports common camera types and performs a...

In Situ Water Quality Measurements Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) System

Water

An unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted water quality measurement system (UAMS) was developed for in situ surface water quality measurement. A custom-built hexacopter was equipped with an open-source electronic sensors platform to measure the temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), and pH of water. Electronic components of the system were coated with a water-resistant film, and the hexacopter was assembled with flotation equipment. The measurements were made at thirteen sampling waypoints within a 1.1 ha agricultural pond. Measurements made by an open-source multiprobe meter (OSMM) attached to the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were compared to the measurements made by a commercial multiprobe meter (CMM). Percent differences between the OSMM and CMM measurements for DO, EC, pH, and temperature were 2.1 %, 3.43 %, 3.76 %, and <1.0 %, respectively. The collected water quality data was used to interpret the spatial distribution of measurements in the pond. The U...

Exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with the simplified 'triangle' technique for soil water content and evaporative fraction retrievals in a Mediterranean setting

International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2021

Information acquired from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is frequently used nowadays in a variety of disciplines and research fields. The present study explores for the first time the combined use of UAVs with a newly proposed technique for estimating eva-porative fraction (EF) and surface soil moisture (SSM). The investigation is performed in a typical Mediterranean setting, a citrus field with flat topography divided in two plots with different irrigation schemes, in Sicily, Italy, at which ground data acquired during an extensive field campaign in July 2019. Reasonable estimates of both EF and surface wetness were produced, with patterns in agreement to vegetation cover fragmentation, topography, and other site-specific characteristics. Validation shows average error of 0.053 for EF and of 0.040 cm 3 cm −3 for SSM. The results are comparable or better to those reported in analogous studies performed in similar areas. This implies that the investigated approach performs well under the semi-arid conditions characterizing the experimental set up. To our knowledge, this study represents the first evaluation of the combined use of the 'simplified triangle' with very high-resolution UAV imagery. As such, the findings are of significance regarding the potential future use of the 'simplified triangle' approach particularly with very fine resolution imagery such as that provided by UAV for mapping and monitoring EF and SSM in agricultural and natural ecosystems. ARTICLE HISTORY

Water sampling with drones

XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Water Resources , 2019

This paper presents proposals to deal with common limitations in surface water sampling routines. Prototypes 1 and 2 were developed in a way that, in addition to having in common the use of small drones, both of them were designed to be simple to build, operate, and maintain. The results of laboratory and field experiments were satisfactory and showed that especially prototype 2 (a disposable bailer connected to a quadcopter with a camera that transmits images in real-time) has the potential to significantly improve fieldwork. Besides its simple operation and maintenance, prototype 2 was able to collect up to 150mL of water in each manual controlled flight-sufficient for 15 turbidity measurements in a portable turbidimeter-with a 5m vertical distance between the drone and the water surface.

Can drones be used to conduct water sampling in aquatic environments? A review

Science of The Total Environment

Previous research has demonstrated the potential of drone-assisted water sampling. • Advancement in off-the-shelf probes allows for real-time data collection. • Reported sample volumes of 330 ml may be insufficient for water sampling programmes. • Research needs to compare the precision and accuracy of data collected via drones. • Cost-benefit analyses are required before water sampling programmes utilise drones.

Survey of Irrigation Area Using Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Micro-Uav) in Gumbasa Irrigation Area

Agricultural Social Economic Journal, 2017

This study aims to develop a new approach in doing evaluation of irrigation system in terms of getting accurate data at a reasonable cost in an essay and fast manner. The research was done at Gumbasa Irrigation District in Sigi, Central of Sulawesi, Indonesia on May-June 2015. The workflow consists of: (i) preparation; (ii) flight planning; (iii) automated flight; (iv) data processing. Data analysis was done by comparison between Red Green Blue (RGB) method and Near Infra Red Green Blue (NirGB) method. The results show that the use of micro-UAV provide an efficient way to collect data needed to manage a very large irrigation system. The RGB image can be effectively used to identify crop's condition on an irrigation area, which is needed to plan irrigation efficiently. The NirGB image can be effectively used to assess tertiary and secondary level of irrigation canal such as leakage.

Innovative Water Quality and Ecology Monitoring Using Underwater Unmanned Vehicles: Field Applications, Challenges and Feedback from Water Managers

With climate change and urban development, water systems are changing faster than ever. Currently, the ecological status of water systems is still judged based on single point measurements, without taking into account the spatial and temporal variability of water quality and ecology. There is a need for better and more dynamic monitoring methods and technologies. Aquatic drones are becoming accessible and intuitive tools that may have an important role in water management. This paper describes the outcomes, field experiences and feedback gathered from the use of underwater drones equipped with sensors and video cameras in various pilot applications in The Netherlands, in collaboration with local water managers. It was observed that, in many situations, the use of underwater drones allows one to obtain information that would be costly and even impossible to obtain with other methods and provides a unique combination of three-dimensional data and underwater footage/images. From data collected with drones, it was possible to map different areas with contrasting vegetation, to establish connections between fauna/flora species and local water quality conditions, or to observe variations of water quality parameters with water depth. This study identifies opportunities for the application of this technology, discusses their limitations and obstacles, and proposes recommendation guidelines for new technical designs.