Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for Monitoring Soil Erosion in Morocco

TLDR

The study introduces a UAV‑based remote sensing approach to bridge the data gap between field‑ and satellite‑scale soil erosion monitoring in Morocco. Using a fixed‑wing Sirius I UAV equipped with a Panasonic camera, the authors conducted multi‑scale surveys with varying flight heights and extents, applied two georeferencing methods (GCPs or UAV log), and processed images photogrammetrically to produce sub‑decimetre Digital Terrain Models and ortho‑mosaics. The resulting high‑resolution data enabled 2D and 3D quantification of gully and badland erosion and informed landscape development analyses over larger areas.

Abstract

This article presents an environmental remote sensing application using a UAV that is specifically aimed at reducing the data gap between field scale and satellite scale in soil erosion monitoring in Morocco. A fixed-wing aircraft type Sirius I (MAVinci, Germany) equipped with a digital system camera (Panasonic) is employed. UAV surveys are conducted over different study sites with varying extents and flying heights in order to provide both very high resolution site-specific data and lower-resolution overviews, thus fully exploiting the large potential of the chosen UAV for multi-scale mapping purposes. Depending on the scale and area coverage, two different approaches for georeferencing are used, based on high-precision GCPs or the UAV’s log file with exterior orientation values respectively. The photogrammetric image processing enables the creation of Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and ortho-image mosaics with very high resolution on a sub-decimetre level. The created data products were used for quantifying gully and badland erosion in 2D and 3D as well as for the analysis of the surrounding areas and landscape development for larger extents.