Simulation of reflectance and vegetation indices for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) monitoring of paddy fields

Reflectance and vegetation indices obtained from aerial images are often used for monitoring crop fields. In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become popular and aerial images have been collected under various solar radiation conditions. The value of observed reflectance and vegetation indices are considered to be affected by solar radiation conditions, which may lead to inaccurate estimations of crop growth. In this study, in order to evaluate the effect of solar radiation conditions on aerial images, canopy reflectance in paddy fields was simulated by a radiative transfer model, FLiES (Forest Light Environmental Simulator), for various solar radiation conditions and canopy structures. Several parameters including solar zenith angle, proportion of diffuse light for incident sunlight, plant height, coordinates of plants and leaf area density, were tested in FLiES. The simulation results showed that the solar zenith angle did not vary the canopy reflectance under the conditions of the proportion of diffuse light at 1.0, but the variation was greater at lower proportions of diffuse light. The difference in reflectance caused by solar radiation was 0.01 and 0.1 at the maximum for red and near-infrared bands, respectively. The simulation results also showed that the differences in reflectance affect vegetation indices (Simple Ratio (SR), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2)). The variation caused by solar radiation conditions was the least for NDVI and the greatest for SR. However, NDVI was saturated at the least leaf area index (LAI), whereas SR was only slightly saturated. EVI2 was intermediate between SR and NDVI, both in terms of variation and saturation. The simulated reflectance and vegetation indices were similar to those obtained from the aerial images collected in the farmers' paddy fields. These results suggest that a large proportion of diffuse light (close to 1.0) or a middle range of solar zenith angle (45 to 65 degrees) may be desirable for UAV monitoring. However, to maintain flexibility of time and occasion for UAV monitoring, EVI2 should be used to evaluate crop growth, although calibration based on solar radiation conditions is recommended.