Assessment of sUAS Based NDVI for Pipeline Vegetation Monitoring

Lucas Kinder*, Samuel Bearinger and Shawn Grushecky

Natural Resource Analysis Center, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources & Design, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506-6108

Presentation Category: Agricultural & Environmental Sciences (Poster Presentation #55)

Student’s Major: Environmental and Energy Resource Management

The purpose of this research project is to validate vegetation coverage remotely on an existing vegetated pipeline corridor using a high resolution, small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) based multispectral sensor. A DJI Matrice 200 V2 sUAS system equipped with a Sentera 6x multispectral sensor will be flown over a section of Arsenal pipeline in order to create a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) using the red and near-infrared spectral images captured by the sensor. Each image will be stitched together to create a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) orthophoto and an NDVI orthophoto using Pix4D photogrammetry software. The NDVI orthophoto’s resolution will be 2.9 centimeter pixels with each pixel containing an associated NDVI value of -1 to 1. Polygons will be chosen in the field based on 2 visual vegetation coverages, vegetated or bare, and the coordinates to the center of each are to be captured using a Spectra Precision SP80 GPS receiver. The NDVI should allow for a remotely captured, vegetated vs. non-vegetated qualitative assessment within georeferenced polygons on the pipeline corridor.

Funding: National Science Foundation EPSCOR Project

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: Other, National Science Foundation EPSCOR Project "Improving Water Management, Treatment, and Recovery in Oil and Gas Production"