Abstract
Advances in unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have increased the potential of remote sensing to overcome scale issues for soil moisture (SM) quantification. Regardless, optical imagery is acquired using various sensors and platforms, resulting in simpler operations for management purposes. In this respect, we predicted SM at 10 cm depth using partial least squares regression (PLSR) models based on optical UAS data and assessed the potential of this framework to provide accurate predictions across dates and sites. For this, we evaluated models’ performance using several datasets and the contribution of spectral and photogrammetric predictors on the explanation of SM. The results indicated that our models predicted SM at comparable accuracies as other methods relying on more expensive and complex sensors; the best R2 was 0.73, and the root-mean-squared error (RMSE) was 13.1%. Environmental conditions affected the predictive importance of different metrics; photogrammetric-based metrics were relevant over exposed surfaces, while spectral predictors were proxies of water stress status over homogeneous vegetation. However, the models demonstrated limited applicability across times and locations, particularly in highly heterogeneous conditions. Overall, our findings indicated that integrating UAS imagery and PLSR modelling is suitable for retrieving SM measures, offering an improved method for short-term monitoring tasks.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2334 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Remote Sensing |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 May 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The European Regional Development Fund within the Estonian National Programme funded this research for Addressing Socio-Economic Challenges through R&D (RITA): L180283PKKK, and the Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology, financed by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund (Estonian University of Life Sciences ASTRA project “Value-chain based bio-economy”). The authors would like to thank Kaja Orupõld for her support and collaboration in providing the materials for measuring the biomass samples.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- machine learning
- microtopography
- multi-spectral
- unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
- vegetation indices
- volumetric water content