Short project description

Artificial drainage installations (popularly known as “tile drains”) are a common practice in poorly drained agricultural areas to drain the excess water and enhance crop productivity. Knowledge of the location of the drainage pipes is important for developing eutrophication mitigation strategies as drain lines act as shortened pathways for solute transport to the aquatic environment. In recent years, studies showed that UAV imagery (visible, multispectral and thermal infrared) proved to be a suitable technique for subsurface drainage mapping as drain lines show up as linear features due to differences in spectral reflectance and thermal inertia between dry and wet soil. In this project, the student will investigate the use of different proximal and distal soil sensors to investigate the possibility mapping subsurface artificial drainage system.

The project is linked to the research project “Framework for Mapping Agricultural Subsurface Drainage Systems Using Proximal and Remote Sensors” (MapTile) with the overall aim at obtaining a better understanding of the performance of different sensors, better understanding of the infiltration pattern near tile drains, and a deeper insight into the application of image processing algorithms for the detection of linear patterns.