Sentinel-2 and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagery for Irrigation Scheduling in Fodder Maize: A Comparative Remote Sensing Approach
Nuria Aide López Hernández, Victor Manuel Rodríguez Moreno, Ricardo Israel Ramírez Gottfried, Ramón Trucíos Caciano, Marco Antonio Inzunza Ibarra, Aldo Rafael Martínez Sifuentes · 2026
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Description
Nuria Aide López Hernández and colleagues compare in 2026 two remote sensing routes for scheduling irrigation in forage maize: satellite images and drone flights. Both feed a vegetation index that tracks crop greenness, which the team converted into crop water-use coefficients during the 2023 season and then tested in real fields in 2024. Two maize hybrids were grown under farmer practice, satellite-guided watering, and drone-guided watering.
The drone model fit the water-use data more tightly, with an R-squared of 0.9414 against 0.8278 for the satellite. Drone scheduling applied 23 to 30 percent less water and kept water productivity high, but the crops grew less and yielded lower-quality forage. Satellite scheduling produced the biggest harvest, reaching 59.8 tonnes per hectare in the best case. The trade-off between saving water and maximizing yield sits at the heart of the comparison.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Nuria Aide López Hernández, Victor Manuel Rodríguez Moreno, Ricardo Israel Ramírez Gottfried, Ramón Trucíos Caciano, Marco Antonio Inzunza Ibarra, Aldo Rafael Martínez Sifuentes |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 53 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |