A meta-analysis and review of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) imagery for terrestrial applications

Singh, Kaushlendra; Frazier, Amy E.

doi:10.1080/01431161.2017.1420941

Cited by 140 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Among others, Singh and Frazier [17] provided a detailed meta-analysis on published articles highlighting the diversity of UAS processing procedures, clearly identifying the critical need for a harmonization and standardization among the many possible strategies to acquire and preprocess data to derive UAS-based products.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring

et al. 2018

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Environmental monitoring plays a central role in diagnosing climate and management impacts on natural and agricultural systems; enhancing the understanding of hydrological processes; optimizing the allocation and distribution of water resources; and assessing, forecasting, and even preventing natural disasters. Nowadays, most monitoring and data collection systems are based upon a combination of ground-based measurements, manned airborne sensors, and satellite observations. These data are utilized in describing both small-and large-scale processes, but have spatiotemporal constraints inherent to each respective collection system. Bridging the unique spatial and temporal divides that limit current monitoring platforms is key to improving our understanding of environmental systems. In this context, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have considerable potential to radically improve environmental monitoring. UAS-mounted sensors offer an extraordinary opportunity to bridge the existing gap between field observations and traditional air-and space-borne remote sensing, by providing high spatial detail over relatively large areas in a cost-effective way and an entirely new capacity for enhanced temporal retrieval. As well as showcasing recent advances in the field, there is also a need to identify and understand the potential limitations of UAS technology. For these platforms to reach their monitoring potential, a wide spectrum of unresolved issues and application-specific challenges require focused community attention. Indeed, to leverage the full potential of UAS-based approaches, sensing technologies, measurement protocols, postprocessing techniques, retrieval algorithms, and evaluation techniques need to be harmonized. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing research and applications of UAS in natural and agricultural ecosystem monitoring in order to identify future directions, applications, developments, and challenges.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring

et al. 2018

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“…Over the last decade, there has been a surge of interest in the development and use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for agricultural and environmental applications [1][2][3]. The opportunities presented by these emergent earth observation systems have revolutionized the manner in which spatial information can be retrieved, offering new capacity for on-demand sensing and high spatio-temporal coverage [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We determine whether the retrieval of dynamic crop height is applicable at industrial field scales and repeatable over the growth cycle of the crops by conducting five unique surveys and a multi-temporal DSM derived from ultra-high (2.5 cm) resolution RGB imagery. Specific objectives for this study include: (1) evaluating the capacity of a fixed-wing UAV to drive SfM based 3D canopy models at the large field scale, repeatedly and consistently over time; (2) testing and applying a repeatable processing workflow to derive crop height; (3) investigating the accuracy of SfM plant height estimates when compared directly to LiDAR ground measurements; and (4) assessing this comparison at multiple resolution scales (2.5, 5, 10 and 20 cm). Considering the importance of crop height as a metric to assess the health and status of agricultural crops, a further goal of this investigation is to demonstrate its applicability in providing farmers (as well as the research community) with practical guidance for data collection and processing that can be used to inform a typical precision agricultural application.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-Season Crop Height Variability at Commercial Farm Scales Using a Fixed-Wing UAV

et al. 2018

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Monitoring the development of vegetation height through time provides a key indicator of crop health and overall condition. Traditional manual approaches for monitoring crop height are generally time consuming, labor intensive and impractical for large-scale operations. Dynamic crop heights collected through the season allow for the identification of within-field problems at critical stages of the growth cycle, providing a mechanism for remedial action to be taken against end of season yield losses. With advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies, routine monitoring of height is now feasible at any time throughout the growth cycle. To demonstrate this capability, five digital surface maps (DSM) were reconstructed from high-resolution RGB imagery collected over a field of maize during the course of a single growing season. The UAV retrievals were compared against LiDAR scans for the purpose of evaluating the derived point clouds capacity to capture ground surface variability and spatially variable crop height. A strong correlation was observed between structure-from-motion (SfM) derived heights and pixel-to-pixel comparison against LiDAR scan data for the intra-season bare-ground surface (R 2 = 0.77 − 0.99, rRMSE = 0.44% − 0.85%), while there was reasonable agreement between canopy comparisons (R 2 = 0.57 − 0.65, rRMSE = 37% − 50%). To examine the effect of resolution on retrieval accuracy and processing time, an evaluation of several ground sampling distances (GSD) was also performed. Our results indicate that a 10 cm resolution retrieval delivers a reliable product that provides a compromise between computational cost and spatial fidelity. Overall, UAV retrievals were able to accurately reproduce the observed spatial variability of crop heights within the maize field through the growing season and provide a valuable source of information with which to inform precision agricultural management in an operational context.

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“…UAVs is one technology able to fill the gap between spaceborne and ground-based observations, ensuring (1) high spatial resolution; (2) tracking of the water bodies better than any satellite technology; (3) operating an UAV is not limited to specific time, such as satellite sensors that synchronize with the sun; (4) flexibility of the payload. Therefore, the use of UAV to quickly obtain topographic data, combined with field measurement data, makes up for most of the small and medium-sized River Basins that are not suitable for station construction but still need discharge monitoring.The research has shown that UAV-based image acquisition is suitable for environmental remote sensing and monitoring [40][41][42][43]. UAV data has also been widely used in the field of river monitoring, e.g., evaluating the ecological environment flow [44], monitoring river morphology and riparian erosion [45,46], estimating river discharges in ungauged catchments [47], etc.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The research has shown that UAV-based image acquisition is suitable for environmental remote sensing and monitoring [40][41][42][43]. UAV data has also been widely used in the field of river monitoring, e.g., evaluating the ecological environment flow [44], monitoring river morphology and riparian erosion [45,46], estimating river discharges in ungauged catchments [47], etc.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Low Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Satellite Remote Sensing Are Used to Calculated River Discharge Attenuation Coefficients of Ungauged Catchments in Arid Desert

Yang

Wang

et al. 2019

Water

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The arid desert ecosystem is very fragile, and the change of its river discharge has a direct impact on irrigation and natural environment. River discharge attenuation coefficients is a key index to reveal the stability of desert river ecosystem. However, due to the harsh conditions in desert areas, it is difficult to establish a hydrological station to obtain data and calculate the attenuation coefficients, so it is urgent to develop new methods to master the attenuation coefficients of rivers. In this study, Taklamakan desert river was selected as the research area, and the river discharge of the desert river were estimated by combining low-altitude UAV and satellite remote sensing technology, so as to calculate the attenuation status of the river in its natural state. Combined with satellite remote sensing, the surface runoff in the desert reaches of the Hotan River from 1993 to 2017 were estimated. The results showed that the base of runoff attenuation in the lower reaches of the Hotan River is 40%. Coupled UAV and satellite remote sensing technology can provide technical support for the study of surface runoff in desert rivers within ungauged basins. Using UAV and satellite remote sensing can monitor surface runoff effectively providing important reference for river discharge monitoring in ungauged catchments.The attenuation coefficients of river discharge is the key index for maintaining fluvial ecosystems and arises through evaporation and infiltration during transport, which is usually calculated from the flow rate during the dry season [9,10]. The process of driving river attenuation depends on a series of physicochemical and biological parameters such as river velocity, temperature, vertical hydrological exchange of surface runoff and groundwater [11,12]. In the past 30 years, some relatively mature computational methods have been developed [13][14][15][16], which can be mainly divided into hydrological methods, hydraulic methods, habitat simulation methods and holistic analysis methods. These methods require a lot of information and require a long time of investigation, which tends to be carried out in areas with abundant hydrological data. However, large portions of total River Basins across the globe are either poorly gauged or completely ungauged [17][18][19], and hydrological observation networks are continuously deteriorating [20]. Therefore, there is a lack of research on surface runoff in ungauged catchments of arid desert [21][22][23], and the study on river attenuation is basically blank, resulting in high variability of attenuation rate in rivers, which complicates the prediction of environmental flows [24,25].Calculating the streamflow in ungauged catchments is surrounded by uncertainty, and is thus a challenging, yet vital task for water management. New and easily accessible satellite data have been increasingly steadily in recent years. Many studies have been conducted using satellite data to estimate river discharge [26][27][28]. Traditional methods for estimating river discharge mainly a...

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A meta-analysis and review of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) imagery for terrestrial applications

Cited by 140 publications

References 63 publications

On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring

On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring

Intra-Season Crop Height Variability at Commercial Farm Scales Using a Fixed-Wing UAV

Low Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Satellite Remote Sensing Are Used to Calculated River Discharge Attenuation Coefficients of Ungauged Catchments in Arid Desert

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