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Automated detection of malfunctions in drip-irrigation systems using

thermal remote sensing in vineyards and olive orchards

Conference Paper · July 2015

DOI: 10.3920/978-90-8686-814-8_64

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http://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/pdf/10.3920/978-90-8686-814-8_64 - Arnon Dag <arnondag@agri.gov.il> - Sunday, July 19, 2015 11:47:44 PM - IP Address:192.114.3.241

Automated detection of malfunctions in drip-irrigation systems using

thermal remote sensing in vineyards and olive orchards

A. Dag1*, Y. Cohen2, V. Alchanatis2, I. Zipori1, M. Sprinstin2, A. Cohen2, T. Maaravi2 and A. Naor3

1Gilat Research Center, Agricultural Research Organization, M.P. Negev 85280, Israel;

arnondag@agri.gov.il
2Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
3The Golan Research Institute, Katzrin 12900, Israel

Abstract

In the current study, the use of thermal remote sensing to detect irrigation-system malfunctions
in olive orchards and table grape vineyards was evaluated. In the first part of the study, irrigation
malfunctions were simulated. In the olive orchard, where deficit irrigation is routinely applied,
both simulated leaks and clogs were detected. In grapevines, where full irrigation is applied, only
simulated long-term dripper clogs were detectable. In the second part of the study, the accuracy of
the automatic detection system was evaluated under commercial conditions. The accuracy of leak
detection by thermal remote sensing was 75-90% and the reliability values of leak and clog detection
were 90 and 70%, respectively. Thermal remote sensing seems to be a useful tool for detecting drip-
irrigation malfunctions, thereby enhancing water-use efficiency and saving on labor.

Keywords: drip irrigation, olive, table grape, canopy temperature, malfunction detection

Introduction

Drip irrigation slowly and regularly applies water through networks of plastic pipes and low-discharge
emitters. The advantage of the drip-irrigation system is that it reduces soil evaporation and increases
water-use efficiency by directing the wetting front to the root zone. Due to water shortages in many
parts of the world, the use of drip irrigation is on the rise. The drip-irrigation system is designed
to provide accurate amounts of water per irrigated area. However, malfunctions frequently occur
as a result of clogging, especially when using low-quality water (Nakayama and Buckes, 1991; Liu
and Huang, 2009), pressure problems (Hornbuckle et al., 2012) or leaks caused by animals or other
causes. With recycled water, the clogging biomass appears to be due to biofouling of the emitters’
flow paths. The fouling biomass is a composite of microbial secretions and suspended particles, both
of which originate from the reclaimed water (Oliver et al., 2014). Regardless of the source of the
problem, a methodology for early detection of clogging or leaking in the field would be useful in
targeting the deployment of cleaning processes (flushing or injection of chemicals) and avoiding the
replacement of laterals (De Camargo et al., 2014). To assess irrigation-system performance, the pipes
are visually monitored along their entire length. This procedure is performed frequently and is quite
labor-intensive. Field-based assessment methods using catch cans are often time-consuming and
impractical in the larger irrigated fields. In the current study, the possibility of using aerial thermal
remote imaging for automated detection of malfunctions in drip-irrigation systems was tested.

Materials and methods

Experimental sites
1. Lachish. The study was conducted on a table grape vineyard in Lachish (Table 1). The plantation
is located in a hilly area in the inner coastal plain of Israel. The tested variety was ‘Thompson

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Seedless’ planted at 3×1.5 m and irrigated with a drip system consisting of one pipe per row. A
total area of about 10 ha of vineyard was used for the study.
2. Revivim. The study was conducted in a commercial olive orchard for oil production near Kibbutz
Revivim (Table 1) on varieties Souri, Barnea and Picual planted at 7×4 m. This orchard is located
in a desert area and was irrigated with a drip system using saline water (more details on the
experimental site are available in Dag et al., 2006). A total area of about 5 ha was used for the
study.
3. Gshur. The study was conducted in a commercial olive orchard for oil production near Kibbutz
Gshur (Table 1) on varieties Koroneiki, Arbequina and Barnea planted at 4×2 m. This orchard
is located in the Golan Height and was irrigated with drip system using fresh water.

Controlled experiment
Malfunctions in the drip-irrigation system were simulated twice for each site during the years 2010-
2011. Thermal imaging and stem water potential (SWP) measurements were conducted on 24 Aug
2010, 16 Jun 2011 and 18 Aug 2011 in the table grape vineyard and on 26 Aug 2010, 12 Jun 2011
and 28 Aug 2011 in the olive orchard. Five irrigation treatments (simulating various drip-irrigation
system malfunctions) were included in the grapevine trial:
• ‘Excess’. Simulating drip-system leakage and performed by adding a second drip line to double
the amount of water, 10 days prior to measurement.
• ‘Control’. Irrigation in accordance with commercial practice.
• ‘4 days’. Simulating short-term dripper clogging by replacing the drip line with a ‘blind’ line (no
dripper) to stop irrigation for 4 days.
• ‘6 days’. Simulating intermediate-term dripper clogging by replacing the drip line with a ‘blind’
line to stop irrigation for 6 days.
• ‘10 days’. Simulating long-term dripper clogging by replacing the drip line with a ‘blind’ line to
stop irrigation for 10 days.
In the olive experiment, treatments were similar, except that the ‘6 days’ treatment was elongated to ‘7
days’ and the ‘10 days’ treatment was elongated to ‘14 days’. Each treatment was replicated six times,
with each replicate consisting of three adjacent rows. While the inner row served for measurements,
the outer ones served as border rows. The length of each replicate was 20 m.

Semi-commercial experiment
A semi-commercial experiment was conducted in three locations as described in Table 1.
Irrigation malfunctions were recorded in two ways. A first screening was performed to evaluate
the accuracy of detection of exposed malfunctions by thermal sensing. The whole area was
scouted by foot, and all of the visible failures were marked using handheld GPS receivers with
mobile-GIS software (ArcPad, ESRI Ltd.). Each location was geo-tagged, labeled as ‘leak’ or ‘clog’,
photographed and archived. The irrigation system was activated during the scouting to enable visual

Table 1. Description of the plantations examined in the semi-commercial experiment.

Location Crop type and variety Area Number

(ha) of plots

Lachish (31.56N 34.86E; ~240 m ASL) Table grapes (‘Thompson Seedless’) 165 26
Revivim (31.052N 34.71E; 290 m ASL) Intensive olive orchard (‘Barnea’, ‘Souri’ and 823 26
‘Picual’)
Gshur (32.82N 35.72E; ~300 m ASL) Super-intensive olive orchard (‘Arbequina’, 555 20
‘Koroneiki’ and ‘Barnea’)

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detection of the malfunctions. In addition to visual inspection (a day after the image acquisition),
field measurements of SWP of vines and olive trees were conducted for an evaluation of method
reliability. The locations for SWP measurements were selected after analyzing the thermal images
and determining ‘suspicious’ points where visual inspection had not revealed an abnormal situation.
Two vines/trees were selected per location for comparison: the suspected tree, and a neighboring
tree of normal appearance. SWP was measured on pre-wrapped, shaded leaves after 2 h of on-plant
equilibration, with an ARIMAD-7,000 pressure chamber (MRC Ltd., Israel) (Shackel et al., 1997).

Image acquisition
Thermal infrared (TIR) images were acquired with an uncooled TIR camera (IR-TCM640, Jenoptics
Inc., Germany). The camera has a microbolometer sensor operating in the 8-14 μm spectral range
with thermal resolution of 0.05 K and temperature accuracy of about 1 K. The camera has a resolution
of 640×480 pixels. The flight altitude was approximately 500 m above the ground, resulting in 0.35
m per pixel on the ground. Nadir images were acquired under clear sky conditions during the
midday hours (12.00-15.00 h).

Processing of thermal images

Image processing was based on analysis of the temperature histogram of the field. Pixels of soil were
masked out, assuming that the soil temperature was more than 7 °C higher than the air temperature.
The rest of the pixels were assumed to represent the canopy. Tree edges contain potentially mixed
pixels (soil and leaves) whose temperature does not represent the canopy temperature. Therefore,
after the soil had been masked out, morphological erosion was performed to omit potentially mixed
pixels. Assuming that canopy temperature distribution was normal (Gaussian), pixels that lay outside
a number of standard deviations from the mean of the population were labeled as anomalies. Pixels
cooler than the average –1 standard deviation (SD) were treated as suspicious for leaks, and pixels
warmer than the average +1 SD were treated as suspicious for clogging. Images were processed
using Matlab R13 software (Mathworks Inc., USA).
Ultimately, the maps of suspicious areas could be used to detect irrigation malfunctions, saving time.
The potential time saving was examined by automatically detecting the route that the farmer should
follow with the map and allocating different traveling speeds to the plots adjacent to suspicious areas
and far from them. A speed of 5 km/h was allocated to adjacent areas and a speed of 20 km/h was
allocated otherwise. The time taken to complete the map-based routes was then compared to that
for the routine route which covers the whole plantation by screening every other row at 5 km/h.

Results and discussion

Simulated malfunctioning
In 2011, at the grapevine site, the SWP values were slightly higher in June than in August (Figure 1).
The ‘10 days’ treatment had significantly lower SWP values than the other treatments. Similarly, for
the canopy temperature, only ‘10 days’ exhibited significant increases in canopy temperature of 1.5-
2.0 °C above the other treatments. No differences were found between the ‘Excess’ and short-term
cessation of irrigation (‘4 days’ and ‘6 days’) treatments and the control. It seems that the grapevines
receive more water than they actually require. Therefore, the increased water supply in the ‘Excess’
treatment could not be detected by SWP or canopy-temperature measurements. It further seems
that the water reservoir in the soil from standard irrigation covered the vine water demand for a
period of 6 to 10 days. Only after that did the plants start to show water stress. Similar trends were
detected in August 2010 (data not shown).
In the olive orchard, plants exhibited lower SWP than grapes (Figure 2 compared to Figure 1). There
was a continuous decrease in SWP values with decreasing water availability. Whereas in June, values
ranged between -17 and -27 MPa, in August they decreased to -22 to -45 MPa. In June, despite

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Temperature SWP Temperature SWP

37 16 37 16
19.6.2011 c 18.8.2011

Canopy temperature (oC)

14 36 14
Canopy temperature (oC)

36
12 b 12
35 35
b b

SWP (-MPa)
SWP (-MPa)
10 10
34 a 34
a a a
a 8 8
a
33 c 33
6 6
b
32 32
4 4
31 ab b 31
a
2 2
a a a a a
30 0 30 0
Excess Control 4 days 6 days 10 days Excess Control 4 days 6 days 10 days

Figure 1. Effect of simulated drip-system malfunctioning in a table grape vineyard on stem

water potential (SWP) and canopy temperature (Lachish, 2011).

the lower difference in SWP between extreme treatments, all treatments were more effectively
differentiated by canopy temperature than in August (Figure 2). Similar trends were detected in
August 2010 (data not shown).
Taken together, it seems that in most cases the thermal images were as sensitive as SWP measurements
for the detection of simulated malfunctions. In grapevines, this system could detect clogged
drippers but not leaks, whereas in the olive orchard, where deficit irrigation is the common practice
(Fernández, 2014), both leaks and clogs could be detected.

Detection of malfunctioning under real conditions

Figure 3 shows a map of areas in Gshur orchard suspected of having leaks or clogs, amounting to
10-20% of the canopy according to the system algorithm developed to detect irrigation malfunctions.
Detection accuracy was evaluated for the ‘leaks’ (anomalies with lower temperature) in the three
tested commercial orchards on two different dates. Overall, 811 exposed leaks of different severity
were detected by the ground screening. On average, at each site, 100 and 170 leaks were detected in

Temperature SWP Temperature SWP

37 50 37 50
12.6.2011 28.8.2011 c
bc 45
Canopy temperature (oC)

c 45 b
36 36 ab
Canopy temperature (oC)

a 40
b 40 d
b
SWP (-MPa)
SWP (-MPa)

35 a 35 35
35 c
a
c
30 34 30
34 b b b
b
25 25
33 33
a a 20 20
a
32 15 32 15
Excess Control 4 days 6 days 10 days Excess Control 4 days 6 days 10 days

Figure 2. Effect of simulated drip-system malfunctioning in an olive orchard on stem water

potential (SWP) and canopy temperature (Revivim, 2011).

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Figure 3. A map of suspected leaks (in grey) and clogs (in black), Gshur olive orchard. Pure
canopy pixels are white.

June and in August, respectively. It should be noted that in the ground screening, only a few clogs
were visually detected, and therefore the detection accuracy for exposed clogs could not be examined.
Figure 4 shows the detection accuracy of exposed leaks. The accuracy values ranged between 70%
and 90%. Similar to the controlled experiment in 2010-2011, lower accuracy values were obtained
for the grapevines in Lachish compared to the olives in Revivim, especially in June. However, the
accuracy values for the olive orchard in Gshur were similar to those for the grapevines. The slightly
lower accuracy in Gshur might be related to the small distance between the trees (4×2 m), a result
of the ‘super high-density orchard’ planting system used at that site. This higher density planting
probably enabled trees to consume water from nearby rows, making drip-irrigation malfunctions
more difficult to detect. Despite the high accuracy values, only 20% of the suspicious areas were
actually exposed leaks. Nevertheless, in 80-100% of the places where no malfunctions were visually
observed, significant differences in SWP were measured relative to the surrounding vines/trees
(Figure 5). Thus, it can be said that the thermal detection procedure detects exposed leaks with
high accuracy, while also reliably detecting excesses and lack of water before they can be seen by
visual inspection. In this context, it should be noted that when maps of suspicious areas were sent
to the farmers, they also indicated that the anomalies revealed either irrigation malfunctions or

Figure 4. Accuracy values of the thermal-based detection for exposed leaks in the three
commercial sites (year 2012).

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100%
80%

Reliability
60%
40%
20%
0%

Leak
Clog

Figure 5. Reliability values of the thermal-based detection of hidden leaks and clogs in two
commercial sites (year 2012).

some other problem. At the Revivim site, for example, some of the suspicious leaks were found to
be olive trees that neighbored infected olives trees (mainly by Verticillium).
In addition to the accuracy and reliability of the detection procedure, the time-saving analysis showed
that the farmer can save around 45% of the monitoring time on each monitoring date by using the
map. An example of a malfunction, map-based monitoring path suggested by the system in a single
olive plot in Gshur site is presented in Figure 6. Seasonal monitoring of irrigation malfunctions
requires 5-7.5 days per hectare of olives and grapevines. The thermal-based detection system can
reduce this to 3-4 days.

Conclusions

Thermal remote sensing can serve as a useful time-saving tool for the detection of drip-irrigation
system malfunctions. It seems that for crops in which deficit irrigation is used (such as olive), this
system can detect both leaks and clogs. On the other hand, in crops that receive an abundance of
water (such as table grapes), leaks cannot be detected and only long-term clogging is easily detected.

Figure 6. Suggested malfunction map-based monitoring path in an olive plot in Gshur site.
The path (white line) follows suspicious leaks (white) and clogs (black) overlaid on the original
thermal image of the plot.

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In addition to the substantial time savings (ca. 45% of the monitoring time), this automated thermal
imaging system can detect a substantial number of malfunctions that cannot be detected visually.
Hence, it conserves water and enables measures to avoid water stress, thereby increasing production.

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