Alfonso Torres-Rua, Rui Gao, Karem Meza Capcha, Anderson Safre, Katherine Osorio-Diaz, Moises Rodrigo Duran-Gomez, Larry Hipps, Steve Petruzza, Calvin Coopmans, & Ian Gowing
Abstract
Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAVs) are excellent scientific tools to describe spatially and over time, changes in phenological conditions of vegetation in different environments that can lead to opportune management decisions. As technology and research with UAVs progress, tools to describe water and energy processes are becoming more reliable, moving towards general adoption in commercial environments. The AggieAir Research Program https://uwrl.usu.edu/aggieair/ at Utah State University (USU), has been conducting, for more than 15 years, UAV technology development and basic research towards accurate, scalable, time- and cost-effective application of these technologies. In this presentation, a summary of major conducted multidisciplinary and multi-institutional projects are presented: US Department of Agriculture led GRAPEX (Grape Remote sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment), oriented to commercial applications of vine grapes and T-REX (Tree crop Remotely-sensed Evapotranspiration eXperiment ), towards commercial almonds and nut trees, USU-led Digital Cherry, for tart cherry production in Central Utah, and TurfEX (Turfgrass tree Urban Remote sensing and energy Fluxes Experiment), for monitoring turfgrass water consumption and quality. This presentation will discuss how UAVs can contribute towards water consumption, stress, and distribution monitoring, new ways of UAV use to address challenges, such as advection in surface energy processes, as well as challenges and opportunities towards a wide use of these technologies by producers.
Comments