Recent Advances in Thermal Remote Sensing for Assessing Crop Water Needs.

To use VRI systems, a field is divided into irrigation management zones (IMZs). While IMZs are dynamic in nature, most of IMZs prescription maps are static. High-resolution thermal images (TI) coupled with measured atmospheric conditions have been utilized to map the within-field water status variability and to delineate in-season IMZs. Unfortunately, spaceborne TIs have coarse spatial resolution and aerial platforms require substantial financial investments, which may inhibit their large-scale adoption. This work will present case studies using high resolution TI for evaluation of water needs in a number of crops and will suggest a number of approaches to close the gap between high resolution and high throuput TI systems.