Citizen science supporting agricultural monitoring with hundreds of low-cost sensors in comparison to remote sensing data

Abstract

The ever-increasing importance of irrigation monitoring and water-use optimization in agriculture calls for new solutions for a more complete understanding of the plant growth dynamic and the agricultural water cycle. In this study, the fitness for use of the Flower Power low-cost sensors, not designed for scientific applications, is evaluated in an integrated agricultural monitoring context in contrast to freely available satellite information from Landsat 8, Sentinel 1 and 2. Measurements of air temperature, solar radiation, leaf area index (LAI) and soil moisture are considered. 456 sensors have been deployed in the Capitanata Irrigation Consortium (Italy) as part of the GROW Observatory project with local farmers collaborating as citizen scientists to either deploy these sensors, monitor the environmental variables and control irrigation management. The main results are: (i) positive agreement between Flower Power sensors and high-quality professional stations for measurements of meteorological variables (5.6°C RMSE for Air Temperature); (ii) acceptable estimates of crops LAI (RMSE = 0.55 m2 m−2) and mixed ones of Surface Soil Moisture (m = 0.75, R2 = 0.23) from Flower Power sensors in respect to different satellite data; (iii) potentiality of these sensors combined with remote sensing in providing suitable tools for irrigation management.

Keywords

• Multiple remote sensing data
• citizen science
• low-cost sensors
• soil moisture
• irrigation water needs