In recent years, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has received increasing attention in remote sensing, vegetation monitoring, vegetation index (VI) mapping, precision agriculture, etc. It has many advantages, such as high spatial resolution, instant information acquisition, convenient operation, high maneuverability, freedom from cloud interference, and low cost. Nowadays, different types of UAV-based multispectral minisensors are used to obtain either surface reflectance or digital number (DN) values. Both the reflectance and DN values can be used to calculate VIs. The consistency and accuracy of spectral data and VIs obtained from these sensors have important application value. In this research, we analyzed the earth observation capabilities of the Parrot Sequoia (Sequoia) and DJI Phantom 4 Multispectral (P4M) sensors using different combinations of correlation coefficients and accuracy assessments. The research method was mainly focused on three aspects: (1) consistency of spectral values, (2) consistency of VI products, and (3) accuracy of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). UAV images in different resolutions were collected using these sensors, and ground points with reflectance values were recorded using an Analytical Spectral Devices handheld spectroradiometer (ASD). The average spectral values and VIs of those sensors were compared using different regions of interest (ROIs). Similarly, the NDVI products of those sensors were compared with ground point NDVI (ASD-NDVI). The results show that Sequoia and P4M are highly correlated in the green, red, red edge, and near-infrared bands (correlation coefficient (R²) > 0.90). The results also show that Sequoia and P4M are highly correlated in different VIs; among them, NDVI has the highest correlation (R² > 0.98). In comparison with ground point NDVI (ASD-NDVI), the NDVI products obtained by both of these sensors have good accuracy (Sequoia: root-mean-square error (RMSE) < 0.07; P4M: RMSE < 0.09). This shows that the performance of different sensors can be evaluated from the consistency of spectral values, consistency of VI products, and accuracy of VIs. It is also shown that different UAV multispectral minisensors can have similar performances even though they have different spectral response functions. The findings of this study could be a good framework for analyzing the interoperability of different sensors for vegetation change analysis.

In recent years, the use of image fusion method has received increasing attention in remote sensing, vegetation cover changes, vegetation indices (VIs) mapping, etc. For making high-resolution and good quality (with low-cost) VI mapping from a fused image, its quality and underlying factors need to be identified properly. For example, same-sensor image fusion generally has a higher spatial resolution ratio (SRR) (1:3 to 1:5) but multi-sensor fusion has a lower SRR (1:8 to 1:10). In addition to SRR, there might be other factors affecting the fused vegetation index (FVI) result which have not been investigated in detail before. In this research, we used a strategy on image fusion and quality assessment to find the effect of image fusion for VI quality using Gaofen-1 (GF1), Gaofen-2 (GF2), Gaofen-4 (GF4), Landsat-8 OLI, and MODIS imagery with their panchromatic (PAN) and multispectral (MS) bands in low SRR (1:6 to 1:15). For this research, we acquired a total of nine images (4 PAN+5 MS) on the same (almost) date (GF1, GF2, GF4 and MODIS images were acquired on 2017/07/13 and the Landsat-8 OLI image was acquired on 2017/07/17). The results show that image fusion has the least impact on Green Normalized Vegetation Index (GNDVI) and Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (ARVI) compared to other VIs. The quality of VI is mostly insensitive with image fusion except for the high-pass filter (HPF) algorithm. The subjective and objective quality evaluation shows that Gram-Schmidt (GS) fusion has the least impact on FVI quality, and with decreasing SRR, the FVI quality is decreasing at a slow rate. FVI quality varies with types image fusion algorithms and SRR along with spectral response function (SRF) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, the FVI quality seems good even for small SRR (1:6 to 1:15 or lower) as long as they have good SNR and minimum SRF effect. The findings of this study could be cost-effective and highly applicable for high-quality VI mapping even in small SRR (1:15 or even lower).