MONITORING OF IRRIGATION SCHEMES BY USING THERMAL CAMERA MOUNTED UAVs

Abstract

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is spreading at an extremely rapid pace in the agricultural sector as in many other sectors. In many areas such as biomass, disease detection, water stress, irrigation, and soil moisture determination, UAVs can be used in agriculture. The biggest problem of irrigation managers is to not be able to fully determine the irrigation activities in the irrigation area by conventional methods. In this study, the possibility of determining the agricultural parcels where irrigation is carried out in the irrigation scheme was investigated with a UAV. During the study, thermal images obtained with a Matrice 600 pro loaded with Zenmuse XT capable of radiometric temperature measurement with 640*320 resolution were used. Thermal images were interpreted by Agisoft Pro. As a result of the study, it has been determined that the irrigation activities carried out in the scheme can be determined easily, especially with the images taken on the first date of the irrigation. In addition, a thermal camera mounted UAV can be detected easily at the points where the leakage losses occur at the irrigation site. thus, irrigation management is determined in areas that need to be concentrated for maintenance services.