DroN2O: A Drone-Based System for Measuring Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Agricultural Fields

Michigan Aerospace Corporation proposes to develop an inexpensive system to sense nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from agricultural fields using laser-based sensors mounted on drones. These sensors include an optical absorption cell, a wind sensor, and a camera for plant health and ground assessment. The measurements from these sensors will be combined and processed with artificial-intelligence-enabled software in order to be able to accurately measure N2O emissions from a given farm field during the entire growing season. The resulting data will provide farmers of energy feedstock crops with tangible incentives to alter farming practices in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. N2O is a significant greenhouse gas that, once emitted, resides in the atmosphere much longer than CO2 and has three hundred times heat-trapping capability than that of CO2; it also depletes the ozone layer. The sensors and overall system will be developed and tested over the course of this project, using heavily-instrumented test plots funded by ARPA-E for “ground-truth” readings during validation campaigns.