A REVIEW ON PRECISION AGRICULTURE WITH UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES FOR SOIL MOISTURE CONTENT ESTIMATION

Abstract

Poor agricultural practices are major contributors to climate change and environmental destruction. Precision agriculture evolves and grows the potential and opportunities of the new field of unmanned aerial systems which demonstrates how to mitigate the impacts of climate change and variability. There are several sectors the unmanned aerial vehicles are being welcomed within the agricultural sector; they have shown to be of great value for crop yield and biomass estimation. It takes little energy to run and operate and it can be from a green power source. Since the clarion call is to move towards a more sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle, industries, businesses and corporations are no exceptions. Modern, exciting new technological innovations are also presented along with the sustainable aspect of conventional agriculture with more precise agricultural practices. By increasing the precision and applying inputs like artificial fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides at a correctly variable amount and time, a reduction of the inputs and the environmental disruption should follow, which result in an increase in the profitability for the farmers, and less environmental damages. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to review published research on remote sensing technology in the agricultural sector, for soil moisture estimations and other unmanned aerial systems (UAS) towards a more sustainable precision agriculture. The synergy between unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), soil moisture content estimation (SMC) and sustainability are main focus of this paper, as the possibilities and opportunities this can open for us can be of significant advancement in profitability and precision agriculture.