Comparative study of multispectral satellite images and RGB images taken from drones for vegetation cover estimation

This study is focused on two types of technologies used for the analysis of the terrestrial surface, photogrammetry from RGB images, taken from drones and the one made from multispectral images captured by satellites. Within this context, two vegetation indicators were studied: the VARI index, used with RGB cameras, and the NVDI index, used with multispectral sensors. In the present study, the evaluation of the level of approximation or complementarity between the results obtained by satellite images and drone images for the characterization of vegetation cover zones using vegetation indicators is shown. The results obtained show that the VARI index obtained with RGB images allows an acceptable vegetation identification and that it shows a certain similarity with the results obtained from the NDVI index obtained with multispectral images. It is also shown that the VARI indices obtained with RBG and multispectral images differ from each other due to the types of sensors with which they are obtained. Finally, one of the advantages of the use of drones for photogrammetry was verified: the possibility of obtaining a higher resolution which allows visualizing effects that could not be obtained with satellite images.