TERRA-REF Documentation
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Primary version
  • Introduction
  • Scientific Objectives
  • Experimental Design
    • The Maricopa Agricultural Center (MAC)
    • Controlled Environment Phenotyping
    • Genomics
  • Data
    • How to Access Data
    • Data Products
      • Environmental conditions
      • Phenotype Data
      • Genomics data
      • Fluorescence intensity imaging
      • Geospatial information
      • Hyperspectral imaging data
      • Infrared heat imaging data
      • Meteorological data
      • Point Cloud Data
      • Controlled Environment phenotype data
    • Data Use Policy
    • Manuscripts and Authorship Guidelines
  • Protocols
    • Field Scanner
    • Sensor Calibration
    • Hyperspectral Data
    • Controlled Environment Protocols
    • Manual Field Data Protocols
    • Phenotractor Protocols
    • UAV Protocols
    • Genomic Protocols
  • Technical Documentation
    • Software
    • Data Standards
      • Existing Data Standards
      • Agronomic and Phenotype Data Standards
      • Genomic Data Standards
      • Sensor Data Standards
      • Data Standards Committee
    • Data Product Levels
    • Directory Structure
    • Data Transfer
    • Data Processing Pipeline
    • Time Series Data in Geostreams
    • Data Backup
    • Systems Configuration
  • Code of Conduct
  • Appendix
    • Glossary
    • Accessing BETYdb with GIS Software
  • References
  • Archived Documentation
    • Developer Manual
      • Submitting data to Clowder
      • Submitting data to BETYdb
      • Submitting Data to CoGe
      • Developing Clowder Extractors
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  • Abstract
  • Materials
  • Platforms
  • Cameras
  • Procedure
  • Flight
  • Calibration
  • Analysis
  • References
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  1. Protocols

UAV Protocols

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Last updated 5 years ago

Authors: Rick Ward

Abstract

Multispectral data collected during seasons 1-5 at Maricopa using small unmanned aircraft systems, i.e. UAVs. Workflow includes image capture with cameras on UAV platforms, generation of georeferenced orthomosic reflectance and index (e.g. NDVI) geotiffs, extraction of plot level statistics within qgis with the aid of polygon shape files in which plot attributes are stored. Downstream users can access the radiometric and index data from the reflectance map geotiffs directly, or from the plot level data uploads.

Materials

Platforms

  • SenseFly eBee fixed-wing drone

  • Hexacopter

Cameras

UAV data are collected using one of three cameras:

  • 5-band

  • 4-band + RGB

  • SenseFly thermal

Cameras are carried singly or in tandem on the SenseFly eBee fixed-wing drone (Sequoia and thermoMap, individually only), or a hexacopter (RedEdge or Sequoia, individually or in tandem).

Procedure

Flight

Calibration

No radiometric calibration was conducted as of Nov 5, 2016.

Analysis

QGIS software was used to confirm geospatial alignment of NDVI geotiffs with shape files containing geolocated positions of the rail foundations. A shape file containing polygons aligning with the middle two rows of each of the 350 experimental units (for sorghum crop Aug-Nov 2016) was kindly generated by Dr. A French of USDA-ARS. Zonal Statistics in QGIS was used to calculate NDVI means for each plot polygon.

References

Standard flight altitude is 44m with 75% image overlap (both sequentially and laterally), and missions are programmed and managed by either or senseFly .

Pix4D software was used to generate gray-scale orthomosaic geotiff files containing NDVI data after georegistration to the WGS84/UTM 12 N coordinate reference system using three to five 2D geo-located ground control points. These are manually matched to 5-40 images each. Ground control points for the Lemnatec Field Scanner are on the concrete pylons and were geolocated using an RTK base station maintained by the USDA-ARS at Maricopa (see section on ).

MicaSense:

SenseFly

QGIS

Pix4D

MicaSense RedEdge
Parrot Sequoia
thermoMap
Mission Planner
eMotion
geospatial information
https://www.micasense.com
https://www.sensefly.com
https://www.qgis.org
https://www.Pix4D.com