Soil moisture mapping using a drone-borne Ground Penetrating Radar

Today, the leading consumer of freshwater is agriculture, and it is consuming up to 70% of the extracted volume. Considering a predicted population increase of 30% by 2050 along with a 70% increase in food production, a major challenge for the coming decades will be to innovate and find smart solutions to sustainably manage water consumption for agriculture. With that in mind, a drone-borne Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) designed to produce high resolution soil moisture maps is in development in the GPRLouvain research center. This tool is meant to rapidly provide soil water content data and could be used in precision agriculture or variable rate irrigation once it is finalised. This Covid19-impregnated thesis was not able to treat high volumes of soil moisture data in order to analyse spatial and temporal variability, but it provides a wide bibliographical review of the technology and presents the method and results for the two measurement campaigns. The results seemed quite consistent and serve as proof that there is a bright future for excellent results in soil water content monitoring using drone-borne GPR.