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Project Overview
Monterra Delicato's San Bernabe vineyard is a 5,000 acre property located south of Monterey, CA. As the largest vineyard in the U.S., it produces approximately $25,000,000 in grapes annually (not including the value of the wine). Frost damage is capable of decreasing annual yields by more than 50%.
Current frost detection systems cannot provide accurate and consistent temperature data that cover the entire vineyard. Dr. Stanley Herwitz (Director of the UAV Collaborative based in the NASA Research Park), Dr. Steve Dunagan (NASA Ames Research Center), and Lee Johnson (California State University) will investigate the utility of real time thermal IR data from UAVs to more efficiently guide the application of protective measures to frost-threatened areas of the vineyard.
Vigor Mapping
In preparation for the frost mission, a small UAV (APV-3; 12-ft wingspan) was used to collect digital color and hyperspectral imagery above the vineyard in August 2003. Data from the downsized payload were transmitted across a wireless local area network to a ground receiving station in near-real-time. High spatial resolution (~20 cm) RGB imagery was registered to the grower's GIS database, and used to map vigor differences within fields. High spectral resolution data were collected in 580 channels, and used for more detailed examination of canopy refectance differences as related to crop vigor. An in-situ wireless sensor web was used to collect a time-series of air temperature data at several locations during the flight.
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