Modern Remote Sensing techniques applied to landfill site monitoring

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology has progressed and widely used in Remote Sensing. The data (images) from the varies camera sensors integrated to the UAV could be used in landfill site monitoring including the identification and measurement of methane (CH4) gas emissions at the site. Also, the global CH4 gas emissions results, but from lower resolution images could be identified from Satellite remote sensing. In this study authors present an approach for landfill mapping through the combination of several sensor data from UAV: quadcopter DJI Matrice 200 with the developed Zenmuse X4S sensor; and Trimble UX5 UAV with the Sony mirrorless NEX-5R sensor. The orthophoto, Digital Elevation model (DEM) and map of Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) were extracted from RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and Near Infrared (NIR) spectral sensors. This data combination indicated condition of landfill boundaries: topography, surface temperature, biological and hydrological characteristics of area, and sparse vegetation which one indicate the gas emissions. The obtained results confirm that the combination of the different UAV camera sensors helps to identify hot spot of CH4 gas emissions at the site faster, lower cost, and independent of weather meteorological conditions than now using the classical static flux chambers methods.