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ARS Home » Plains Area » College Station, Texas » Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center » Aerial Application Technology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #333778
Title: Converting aerial imagery to application maps

Author
item Yang, Chenghai
item Hoffmann, Wesley

Submitted to: Agricultural Aviation
Publication Type: Popular Publication
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/30/2016
Publication Date: 11/2/2016
Citation: Yang, C., Hoffmann, W.C. 2016. Converting aerial imagery to application maps. Agricultural Aviation. pp. 72-74.

Interpretive Summary: Over the last couple of years in Agricultural Aviation and at the 2014 and 2015 NAAA conventions, we have written about and presented both single-camera and two-camera imaging systems for use on agricultural aircraft. Many aerial applicators have shown a great deal of interest in the imaging systems and some have assembled their own. Now the questions facing these aerial applicators are how to convert large numbers of images taken with the systems to georeferenced image mosaics and how to create vegetation index and prescription maps for crop pest detection, nutrient status assessment and variable rate application. In this article, we discuss how to use the commercial software Pix4DMapper to convert the normal color and near-infrared images acquired with a two-camera imaging system into georeferenced image mosaics, surface elevation models, vegetation index maps and prescription maps that can be readily used for precision application.

Technical Abstract: Over the last couple of years in Agricultural Aviation and at the 2014 and 2015 NAAA conventions, we have written about and presented both single-camera and two-camera imaging systems for use on agricultural aircraft. Many aerial applicators have shown a great deal of interest in the imaging systems and some have assembled their own. Now the questions facing these aerial applicators are how to convert large numbers of images taken with the systems to georeferenced image mosaics and how to create vegetation index and prescription maps for crop pest detection, nutrient status assessment and variable rate application. In this article, we discuss how to use the commercial software Pix4DMapper to convert a set of geotagged natural color or red-green-blue (RGB) and near-infrared (NIR) images acquired with a two-camera imaging system into georeferenced image mosaics, surface elevation models, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maps and prescription maps that are readily useable for variable rate application.