Airborne thermal infrared videography of stream temperature anomalies from a small unoccupied aerial system

Small unoccupied aerial systems (sUAS) are one of the latest technological innovations that are changing the way we view and analyse landscape patterns and processes. As sUAS technology has continued to advance, lighter sensor payloads have been developed that can now be integrated with sUAS for collecting both visual and multispectral imagery. Of these, a specific type of imagery, thermal infrared (TIR), can be used to image water bodies to assess surface temperature (e.g., Briggs, Hare, Boutt, Davenport, & Lane, 2016; George, Baldigo, Smith, Mckeown, & Faulring, 2015; Handcock et al., 2012). While the TIR literature from platforms such as satellites, aircraft, and handheld cameras is extensive (e.g., Handcock et al., 2012; Wawrzyniak, Piégay, Allemand, Vaudor, & Grandjean, 2013), it is only relatively recently that payloads of similar quality have been developed for integration with sUAS. sUAS offer a unique opportunity to image stream temperature at an intermediate scale between those of fine scale, stationary thermal cameras (e.g., Briggs et al., 2016), and aircraft or satellite‐based platforms (e.g., Jensen, Neilson, McKee, & Chen, 2012; Fullerton et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2016). objectives: to image and map submarine groundwater discharge (Lee et al., 2016), lake thermal structure (Chung et al., 2015), and patterns of river temperature (DeMario et al., 2017; Jensen et al., 2012; Pai et al., 2017). Our specific aim in this study was to explore the utility of light sensor TIR payloads carried by sUAS to provide real‐time TIR data collection, which may be useful for guiding field campaigns or rapidly assessing hydrological responses to events. Existing literature has demonstrated the utility of TIR for a variety of pursuits, including identifying locations of groundwater‐surface