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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Tifton, Georgia » Southeast Watershed Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #417720
Research Project: Shifting the Balance of Water Resources and Interacting Agroecosystem Services Toward Sustainable Outcomes in Watersheds of the Southern Coastal Plain

Location: Southeast Watershed Research

Title: Resolving relationship between spectral reflectance and dissolved organic carbon in irrigation ponds in the Little River Experimental Watershed using UAS multispectral imagery

Author
item ALBRIGHT, ANDREA - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item Coffin, Alisa
item Pisani, Oliva

Submitted to: American Geophysical Union Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/1/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Farm ponds are a common feature of agricultural landscapes due to their use for crop irrigation. The number of such irrigation ponds are increasing globally, but the fluctuations and dynamics of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in such ponds are currently poorly understood. Water sampling campaigns to capture variability throughout the growing season are costly and difficult to complete at a high sampling frequency. Remote sensing has successfully found correlations between DOC and remote sensing reflectance in natural waters, from coastal environments to lakes and estuaries, but ponds are difficult to study from satellites due to their size relative to the image resolution of most platforms. UAS/UAVs have emerged as a remote sensing approach that provides high resolution imagery that could be applied for determining DOC concentrations in irrigation ponds at high temporal resolutions. Throughout the 2022 field season a UAS platform equipped with a multispectral Micasense RedEdge-MX Dual Camera System with 10 bands ranging from 444-842 nm was flown over a set of irrigation ponds coincident with a field sampling campaign to measure DOC. A regression relationship between the average surface reflectance at each limnetic sampling location and concentrations of DOC was found and applied to the reflectance of additional UAS flights without coincident water sampling to capture the variability of DOC at a much higher sampling frequency without the difficulty and expense of field sampling. This method was applied to three ponds in the Little River Experimental Watershed to give a fuller picture of DOC variability across an agricultural landscape.