Abstract
Precision Viticulture is experiencing substantial growth thanks to the availability of improved and cost-effective instruments and methodologies for data acquisition and analysis, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), that demonstrated to compete with traditional acquisition platforms, such as satellite and aircraft, due to low operational costs, high operational flexibility and high spatial resolution of imagery. In order to optimize the use of these technologies for precision viticulture, their technical, scientific and economic performances need to be assessed. The aim of this work is to compare NDVI surveys performed with UAV, aircraft and satellite, to assess the capability of each platform to represent the intra-vineyard vegetation spatial variability. NDVI images of two Italian vineyards were acquired simultaneously from different multi-spectral sensors onboard the three platforms, and a spatial statistical framework was used to assess their degree of similarity. Moreover, the pros and cons of each technique were also assessed performing a cost analysis as a function of the scale of application. Results indicate that the different platforms provide comparable results in vineyards characterized by coarse vegetation gradients and large vegetation clusters. On the contrary, in more heterogeneous vineyards, low-resolution images fail in representing part of the intra-vineyard variability. The cost analysis showed that the adoption of UAV platform is advantageous for small areas and that a break-even point exists above five hectares; above such threshold, airborne and then satellite have lower imagery cost.
Highlights
Precision Agriculture (PA) could be defined as the site specific management of crops heterogeneity both at time- and spatial-scale [1] in order to enhance the efficiency of agricultural inputs to increase yields, quality and sustainability of productions
The basic statistics performed on the images at native resolution highlighted differences between the three platforms in their range of values. For both V1 and V2 the histogram of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) values is broader and shows NDVI values between 0.2 and 0.9; values range for aircraft images is between 0.3 and 0.7 while satellite images show a narrower NDVI interval between 0.5 and 0.65 (Figure 1a,b)
This different behavior between the three platforms is confirmed by the descriptive statistics (Table 2), where UAV images show a higher standard deviation compared to aircraft and satellite images
Summary
Precision Agriculture (PA) could be defined as the site specific management of crops heterogeneity both at time- and spatial-scale [1] in order to enhance the efficiency of agricultural inputs to increase yields, quality and sustainability of productions. Traditional remote sensing technologies based on satellite and aircraft platform, are continuously improving in terms of spatial and temporal resolution, enhancing their suitability for PV applications Each of these technologies has pros and cons that involve technological, operational and economic factors. UAVs are well suited for small scale and research applications, while their limited payload and short flight endurance still remain areas of weakness for their wide scale implementation in PV These factors pose a “scale dilemma”, making the identification of the most effective technology strictly dependent on the spatial scale and the purpose of the survey, and calls for an improved assessment of technical, scientific and economical performances of the different remote sensing platforms to assess their optimal operational context. In all operational-oriented studies, a cost comparison between different technological solutions is of vital importance to define for each of them the cost/effectiveness range of application and their respective limits of convenience
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