Theses and Dissertations

Derek Rosseau

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Dyer, Jamie

Committee Member

Fuhrmann, Christopher

Committee Member

Brown, Mike

Date of Degree

5-3-2019

Original embargo terms

Worldwide

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Professional Meteorology/Climatology

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Geosciences

Abstract

We propose the use of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with temperature, pressure, and relative humidity sensors to estimate sensible and latent heat fluxes over an active agricultural area in east-central Mississippi. The Bowen ratio method is applied to vertical soundings from the surface to 120 meters at 10-meter intervals. A number of flights were conducted at Mississippi State University during the late stages of the growing season with the purpose of obtaining heat flux estimates over different land surface/cover types. Results show that the UAV platform is able to provide reasonable heat and moisture flux estimates, and that the fluxes show substantial variability among different land cover types over a small spatial scale. Future work must be done to quantify the diurnal and seasonal changes in heat flux estimates over various crop types and investigate flight plans and sensor mounting options to maximize sensor precision.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/21214

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