DAKIS-Grasslands

Full title

Monitoring grassland dynamics using UAV imagery and crop modeling

Goals

Given the heterogeneity of grassland fields, continuous changes in height and phenology of plant, together with high variability in soil and weather conditions, the productivity of different sites vary due to local scale responses. This emphasizes the necessity for grassland productivity models that can be run at small spatial and temporal scales, thus making long-term grassland productivity predictions as informative as possible. The specific goals of this research are:

1. Evaluate the use of remote sensingRS data (mainly UAV based sensors) to quantify small-scale variability of biomass production and feed quality of grassland vegetation
2. Develop a grassland model solution in the framework of SIMPLACE that is able to simulate grassland dynamics (biomass and N-content) under the effects of small-scale variability of soil and groundwater conditions
3. Improve the performance of the model and reducing grassland model uncertainty with respect to the simulation of small-scale variability of biomass production by the assimilation of the remotely sensedRS data.

PhD Student

Clara Bazzo

Primary supervisor

Dr Thomas Gaiser

Co-supervisors

Dr. Bahareh Kamali

Funded by

Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)