The Feasibility of Measured the Surface Soil Moisture By Digital Images from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

The traditional methods for analyzing wide ranges of surface soil moisture of spatial distribution surveys, may require plenty resources besides the high cost. Therefore, this research applies the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology for its flexibility and its limitless options in the digital imaging field. After collecting the data from the digital image hue, the correlation coefficient of the image hue and the surface soil moisture is analyzed; the results will determine the feasibility of this method.

In this study, the software ImageJ 1.48 is applied for the analysis of the digital imaging and the hue analysis into Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values. The correlation analysis is the result from the data obtained from the image hue and the surface soil moisture.

This research refers to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for the soil texture calculator; in which the data from the particle size analysis are applied. As the results show, the soil texture belongs to loamy sand. Loamy sand has a large porosity, good drainage capacity and venting capacity; therefore the surface soil moisture has good evaporation rate.The distribution of the cross correlation between the digital image hue and surface soil moisture variationsindicate that the distribution is heterogeneous. Moreover, the cross correlation is negative; result which shows that the results of our findings are similar to other related researches.

Based on the outcomes of the research, using digital images from UAV to estimate the surface soil moisture is acceptable. However, further investigations need to be done in order to verify the relation between the image hue and the soil moisture for reliable moisture estimations.

Keywords : soil, moisture, remote sensing.