Application of airborne imagery for mapping water stress and scheduling irrigation for vegetable crops

气候变化、干旱和非农业部门不断增长的用水需求导致的水资源短缺正威胁着粮食生产。灌溉用水管理的创新需要优化加拿大水资源紧张地区的农业用水。这不仅将维持作物产量的增加，而且还将减少养分淋失和土壤和水的污染。传统的灌溉水应用主要依赖于土壤水分测量，这是一项劳动密集型的工作，而且难以在大空间尺度上准确表征土壤和作物参数的异质性。而基于可见光和近红外光谱区域的遥感植物胁迫指标具有较高的空间和光谱分辨率，能够反映作物和土壤的时空变异性。拟议的研究旨在采用从无人机获取的遥感图像，作为精确确定灌溉应用的潜在方法。该项目侧重于使用先进的数据和图像分析技术，为实时灌溉用水管理提供更精确的植物水分状况信息，这将具有成本效益，并为农民提供商业应用。这项创新研究将产生新的科学知识，利用遥感、实时数据来调度灌溉和推进可变速率灌溉技术。该工业合作伙伴是休伦测绘公司，这是一家全资拥有的加拿大航空测绘公司，总部位于安大略省南部。

Water scarcity due to climate change, drought, and rising water demands from non-agricultural sectors, isthreatening food production. Innovations in irrigation water management are required to optimize agriculturalwater use in water stressed regions of Canada. This will not only sustain increased crop yields, but will alsoreduce nutrient leaching and contamination of soil and water. Conventional irrigation water applications relymainly on soil moisture measurements, which are labor intensive, and also difficult to accurately representheterogeneity of soil and crop parameters at large spatial scales. However, remotely sensed plant stressindicators, based on the visible and near-infrared spectral regions, have the advantage of high spatial andspectral resolutions, and account for spatial and temporal variability of crops and soil. The proposed research isgeared towards the adoption of remotely sensed images, acquired from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, as apotential method to precisely determine irrigation applications. The project focuses on the use of advanceddata and image analysis techniques to provide more precise information about plant water status for real-timeirrigation water management that would be cost-effective and commercially available to farmers. Thisinnovative research would generate new scientific knowledge on the use of remotely sensed, real-time data toschedule irrigation and advance variable rate irrigation technology. The industrial partner is Huron Geomatics,a wholly owned Canadian aerial mapping company based in Southern Ontario.