Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Agricultural, Environmental, and Sustainability Sciences

First Advisor

Alexis Racelis

Second Advisor

Chenghai Yang

Third Advisor

Bradley Christoffersen

Abstract

Sustainability in agriculture starts with the health of soil-- from its productivity and fertility, to its ability to retain water during droughts and allow for drainage during rain. One approach of improving soil health is the use of cover crops, a practice associated with improved nutrient availability in soils, the promotion of soil biodiversity and organic matter to improve density and structure, effective weed management, and ultimately improved yields of subsequent cash crops. Assessing the cumulative impacts of cover crops is difficult, with various metrics and indicators. Crop dry weight may be a way to predict the effects cover crops have on agriculture, since it is an important measure of the productivity, health, and sustainability of an ecosystem. Unmanned Aerial Systems, UAS, can capture extensive data to approximate the field level effects of cover crops on productivity, and their association with subsequent cash crops. As part of a larger Conservation Innovation Trial on cover crops in water-limited farms of the RGV, I use ground-truthing methods and UAS to assess crop height and weight differences and estimate above ground crop volumetric mass at key stages of crop growth, and to develop digital elevation models. These models are used to compare control fields (no cover cropping) and side-by-side cover-cropped fields to ground gathered data, to examine their implications on the plant height and mass of cash crops. However, these methods require further refinement for accuracy.

Comments

Copyright 2024 Carlos A. Garcia Patlan. https://proquest.com/docview/3115383767

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