Feasibility of satellite and drone images for monitoring soil residue cover

Monitoring crop residue cover (CRC) is one of the most important issues to achieve sustainable agriculture. Generally, it can be possible using remote sensing technology. New tools for remote sensing are regularly introduced by advancement of technology. In this study we used Landsat 8 OLI data plus images captured by a drone above the selected plots for remote sensing of CRC. For the remote sensing trails, a total of 23 indices were used to identify the CRC, of which 6 index; dead fuel index (DFI), Normalized difference tillage index (NDTI), Simple tillage index (STI), RATIO, Normalized difference index (NDI3), and NDI4 showed acceptable correlations with the CRC and DFI with R2 = 0.96 was the highest. Among the images captured by drone, those images taken from 10-meters height, showed acceptable correlation results up to 0.84, based on the three the RGB based indices; (R-G)/(G-B), 2×G-R-B and G/(R+G+B). Similar to satellite imaging, drone captured images can be used to estimate amount of CRC. This study showed that results from Landsat 8 OLI imagery is slightly more accurate than drone imagery for estimating CRC, however there are certain advantages associated with drone imagery including lower expenses, easy access and more control over data range desired plus more spatial and temporal resolutions.