Application of unmanned aerial vehicles for remote estimation of pasture fertility while growing Dzhalginsky merino sheep

Abstract

Agricultural exploration of an area is one of the effective ways to use aerospace monitoring. The range of issues that can be solved with the images from satellite photographs and technological equipment of unmanned aerial vehicles includes the task of receiving some information about the composition and condition of crops, potential yields, diseases and damage to crops by pests, the problem of land inventory, biomass estimation and study of the dynamics of agricultural land use. In order totake a remote assessment of pasture fertility, an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a special camera for calculating the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) was used. Researches of domestic and foreign authors show that maximum absorption of solar radiation by chlorophyll of higher vascular plants is in the red region of the spectrum (0.6-0.7 µm), and the region of maximum reflection of cellular leaf structures is in the infrared region (0.7-1.0 µm). It enables the NDVI index to be used as a simple quantitative indicator of the amount of photosynthetically active biomass. The results of monitoring the NDVI index on pastures of the Stavropol Territory of the Russian Federation were compared with the results of the analysis of pasture grass for carotene content. The correlation index was 0.98. On the basis of the obtained data, the regression equations were calculated. They enable topredict the dynamics of changes in the nutritional value of pasture plots and determine the load of livestock of Dzhalginskiy Merino sheep.