Drones equipped with cameras are increasingly being used in environmental assessment studies and agriculture. For example, such drone-camera systems have recently been used to monitor ocean algal blooms (Fernandez-Figueroa, Wilson, and Rogers 2022) and wetland inundation and vegetation change in an estuarine reserve (Dehm, Becker, and Godre, n.d.). Drone cameras are also used to measure different aspects of crops, such as growth vigour, biomass and water-stress (Hafeez et al. 2022). Specialized cameras for vegetation monitoring often have a sensor sensitive to wavelengths in the near-infrared part of the EM-spectrum. Healthy photosynthesising vegetation shows high reflectance in near-infrared wavelengths, but comparatively low reflectance in the red part of the spectrum (Myneni et al. 1995). So, if red and near-infrared wavelengths are recorder by a drone sensor, the condition or growth vigour of vegetation can be quantified with vegetation indices such as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI (Huang et al. 2021). This index ranges from − 1 to 1, with higher values interpreted as vegetation with higher growth vigour. Vegetation indices like NDVI are being applied to measure eutrophication in waterbodies (Barajas et al. 2021; Sheng, Azhari, and Ibrahim 2021), and to quantify the condition of crops, and how it varies spatially and over time. Such drone-camera systems offer a comparatively low-cost method to capture image data for wide areas, and allows data to be spatially referenced so that it can be overlaid with other sources of spatially explicit data. Different drone camera sensors however have different price-points and characteristics that may influence the quality of measurements (Nijland et al. 2014). Thus, as the use of these technologies scale in agriculture and environmental studies, it is all the more necessary to evaluate the measurement bias or limitations of different drone sensor types.
There are different ways in which cameras are designed to capture near-infrared wavelengths (Maes and Steppe 2019). One option is that the camera has a separate imaging sensor and lens for each wavelength band. The second option is that a single sensor red-green-blue (RGB) camera is modified to become also sensitive to light in the near-infrared spectrum (Lebourgeois et al. 2008). In this article these are referred to as infrared converted cameras (Nijland et al. 2014), although they are also referred to as modified RGB (Lebourgeois et al. 2008; Wang and Brinker 2020) or modified multispectral cameras (Fernandez-Figueroa, Wilson, and Rogers 2022). Infrared converted cameras work by removing the filter which blocks NIR light from entering the sensor, and then substituting one of the RGB camera’s bands for the NIR band. For example, instead of Red-Green-Blue, the camera becomes sensitive to Red-Green-NIR. The single sensor infrared converted cameras are cheaper (by order of magnitude) than multispectral cameras with multiple sensors. They thus pose an attractive alternative, especially in cases where ‘proper’ multispectral cameras are considered prohibitively expensive. Several studies highlight the value of lowering the cost of technologies that can support environmental monitoring (Fernandez-Figueroa, Wilson, and Rogers 2022) and agriculture (Fernandez-Gallego et al. 2019; Cucho-Padin et al. 2020; Corti et al. 2019).
Infrared converted cameras are an appealing option for drone agriculture remote sensing because of their comparative low-cost and ability to capture near-infrared wavelengths. but it is necessary to verify the accuracy of spectral measurements made by these sensors. Despite being successfully used in studies (Lebourgeois et al. 2008; Argolo dos Santos et al. 2020), some authors reported lower measurement accuracy for infrared converted cameras, if compared to multi-sensor cameras or spectroscopes (Bueren et al. 2015; Gomes et al. 2021; Nijland et al. 2014). This might partially be because the bands captured by single-sensor RGB camera is usually sensitive to light outside of the target wavelengths, and so measurements in specific band may be polluted by light in other parts of the spectrum (Burggraaff et al. 2019; Berra et al. 2015). This means for example that a modified RGB camera may report incorrect values for a specific band, because the sensor is also capturing light from the neighbouring bands.
Before such cameras can be recommended for operational use on farms, it is important to verify that spectral measurements and vegetation indices derived from the infrared converted camera correspond well to measurements made by other ‘proper’ multispectral cameras, or hand-held spectrometers. The study by Gomes et al. (2021) investigated this dynamic for the Mapir Survey3W commercial infrared converted camera, by comparing it to the multispectral MicaSense RedEdge-MX camera. The study calculated the vegetation index NDVI of a coffee plantation using both cameras, as well as a handheld NDVI sensor. It was observed that NDVI measurements made by the infrared converted camera were consistently lower, if compared to the multispectral camera and handheld NDVI sensor. This finding may have important repercussions for the operational use of such infrared converted cameras, since farmers or agriculture service provider companies may incorporate erroneous readings from the infrared converted camera into their crop monitoring system. This can lead to incorrect interpretation of crop condition, or wrong application of fertiliser, in a case where a variable rate application system is used. Or, in a eutrophication study, the extent of algal blooms may be underestimated, for example.
The current study reinvestigates the question of the suitability of current commercial infrared converted cameras for use in vegetation condition monitoring. To improve continuity between research, we present a case-study that considers the same multispectral camera, handheld NDVI sensor and infrared converted camera used by the study of (Gomes et al. 2021). Our experiment differs however in the calibration technique used, specific spectral filter used in the infrared converted camera, and also the crop type that was captured. By critically evaluating the performance of infrared converted sensors for crop monitoring, the agriculture sector can make informed decisions about what systems to use, and their potential challenges (Bueren et al. 2015).