UAS-based remote sensing applications on the Northern Colorado Limited Irrigation Research Farm

USDA-ARS (Agricultural Research Service) Water Management and Systems Research Unit established a Limited Irrigation Research Farm (LIRF) inNorthern Colorado in 2008 to respond the urgent need of sustaining irrigated agriculture in semi-area regions with limited water resources and increasing population. Agricultural research has been conducted at this facility to optimize irrigation strategy, accurately quantify crop water use, develop sensor-based irrigation scheduling algorithms, and investigate physiological responses to crop water stress. An unmanned aerial system (UAS) was developed and used to collect multispectral and thermal imagery for irrigation and other field applications. The results in the study confirmed the capability of UAS to collect high-quality, high spatial and temporal resolution crop data for field-based agricultural applications and aid farmers to manage their water resources and sustain crop production in a more advanced way. Keywords: NDVI, CRSI, CWSI, maize, water stress, genotype, yield DOI:  10.33440/j.ijpaa.20190202.50.  Citation: Zhang H, Yemoto K. UAS-based remote sensing applications on the Northern Colorado Limited Irrigation Research Farm.  Int J Precis Agric Aviat, 2019; 2(2): 1–10.