Estimating biomass in temperate grassland with high resolution canopy surface models from UAV-based RGB images and vegetation indices

Abstract

© The Authors. Monitoring grassland biomass throughout the growing season is of key importance in sustainable, site-specific management decisions. Precision agriculture applications can support these decisions. However, precision agriculture relies on timely and accurate information on plant parameters with a high spatial and temporal resolution. The use of structural and spectral features derived from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based image data from low-cost sensors is a promising nondestructive approach to assess plant traits such as above-ground biomass or plant height. Therefore, the main objectives were (1) to evaluate the potential of low-cost UAV-based canopy surface models to monitor sward height as an indicator of grassland biomass, (2) to evaluate the potential of vegetation indices from low-cost UAV-based red-green-blue (RGB) digital image data, and (3) to compare the mentioned methods with established methods for biomass monitoring such as rising plate meters and spectroradiometer-based narrowband vegetation indices over the growing season in 2017, including three cuts. We compared the accuracy of each single UAV-based height feature and vegetation index using a combined multivariate approach to estimate fresh and dry biomass. The heterogeneous sward structure with high spatiotemporal variability led to varying performance in biomass estimation depending on the growths (time between two cuts) and choice of predictor variable. The results showed that biomass prediction by height features provided moderate-to-good results (cross-validation R2 = 0.57 to 0.73 for dry biomass and 0.43 to 0.79 for fresh biomass), but reference measurements based on rising plate meters were more robust when estimating biomass. The spectral features (RGB-based vegetation indices and spectroradiometer-based vegetation indices) yielded varying accuracy and suitability for biomass prediction. Despite the variability, our findings indicate a promising approach for grassland biomass monitoring.