Validation of drone-borne Ground Penetrating Radar method for soil moisture mapping

Details

Supervisors

Lambot, Sébastien

Faculty

Faculté des bioingénieurs

Degree label

Master [120] : bioingénieur en sciences et technologies de l'environnement, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Nowadays, agriculture is the leading consumer of freshwater resources, accounting for 70% of the global extracted volume. With the global population set to increase by 65% by 2050, pressure on freshwater resources will increase more importantly without a more sustainable agricultural system. In that regard, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) methods are very promising with respect to the precision irrigation, which needs information collection of soil water content at high spatial resolution. GPR methods can bridge the gap between the small scale of the TDR and the larger scales of the remote sensing instruments and constitute therefore an useful tool in the road to sustainability. This thesis aims the validation of the soil moisture mapping through drone-borne GPR using the radar model of Lambot et al. (2004). In this paper, several numerical experiments were carried out to assess the viability of the assumptions of the model. Then, some acquisition campaigns were conducted and the results were assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally, a validation campaign was carried out using several tools in order to allow the comparison between these, as well as with ground-truth moisture value.