Using Drone-Based Remote Sensing Products to Detect Land Surface Conditions in Drylands

The 3D products derived from drone-based remote sensing provide digital surface models (DSMs) with ultra-high resolution at a landscape scale. Some critical land surface processes can be quantitatively identified by using these DSMs. This paper aims to gain three land surface indicators (i.e., vegetation biomass, land surface height, and dust flux) from the 3D product (DSM). Vegetation biomass and dust flux were estimated from the established models (i.e., canopy volume model and wind erosion (WEMO) model) using the structural land surface indicators from DSMs. Land surface height was directly retrieved from DSMs. As a result, a drone-based estimate of these three indicators has a high correlation compared to the field measurement. In the future, these three indicators can be used to describe the occurred land surface processes in drylands.