A GIS-Based Approach for Manure-Spreading Monitoring within the Digital Agricultural Framework

The growing need for sustainable management approaches of crops and bare soils re quires measurements at a multiple scale (space and time) field system level, which have become increasingly accurate. In this context, proximal and satellite remote sensing data cooperation seems good practice for the present and future. The primary purpose of this work is the development of a sound protocol based on a statistical comparison between Copernicus Sentinel-2 MIS satellite data and a multispectral sensor mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), featuring spectral deployment identical to Sentinel-2. The experimental dataset, based on simultaneously acquired prox imal and Sentinel-2 data, concerns an agricultural field in Pisa (Tuscany), cultivated with corn. To understand how the two systems, comparable but quite different in terms of spatial resolution and atmosphere impacts, can effectively cooperate to create a value-added product, statistical tests were applied on bands and the derived Vegetation and Soil index. Overall, as expected, due to the men tioned impacts, the outcomes show a heterogeneous behavior with a difference between the coinci dent bands as well for the derived indices, modulated in the same manner by the phenological sta tus (e.g., during the canopy developments) or by vegetation absence. Instead, similar behavior be tween two sensors occurred during the maturity phase of crop plants.