MONITORING PHOSPHATE LEVELS USING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES ON GEOTHERMAL WATER POOLS

Remote sensors transported on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) give us new possibilities to collect data from a specific area. One of the last uses is the estimation of parameters on natural resources as water parameters at geothermal pools. The main idea to use them is to avoid high costs in the maintenance in comparison with other techniques as water sampling. Thus, this work aims to establish models to monitor phosphate levels on geothermal pools using thermal remote sensors above an UAV in Ecuador. The model results indicate an acceptable correlation between the surface temperature; acquired from a thermal sensor; and the phosphate levels get from the water samples. Consequently, we have an alternative to monitor the phosphate and the possibility to replicate the methodology with other water parameters at pools.