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Drone technology suits a myriad of conservation and environmental protection applications — offering quick, easy and cost-effective aerial imagery, on demand.
From glacial feature modeling and erosion monitoring to animal counting and species identification, the list of projects that drones are being used for is long and continues to grow.
The camera, or payload, that a drone carries directly influences the imagery it can capture and therefore its potential usage. Here's a quick guide to the most commonly-used aerial imaging sensors in this field:
Like the camera in your smartphone or SLR, RGB sensors acquire data in the visible spectrum (specifically Red, Green & Blue bands). The images they produce can be transformed into 2D orthomosaics (A.K.A. orthophotos) and 3D digital surface models. Such sensors have been used, for example to create terrain models of glacial features, monitor coastal erosion, perform volume measurements etc.
These cameras acquire data across bands in the visible and non-visible spectrums. This type of data enables users to compute vegetation indices in order to create reflectance maps for assessing plant health, estimating biomass and more.
Temperature-measuring thermal cameras, such as the senseFly thermoMAP, assign a temperature value to each pixel and have already proved highly useful in the field—being used to count treetop orangutan nests and seals, assess the spread of wildfires and more.
Example drone applications in this field include:
Animal/flock counting Camera trap image retrieval Vessel monitoring (e.g. whaling ships) Animal tracking (e.g. via radio tracker collars/triangulation) Migration tracking Perimeter assessment Habitat management Anti-poaching activities (identification, deterrence) Nest surveys Species identification Plant health/stress analysis Soil property & moisture analysis Biomass estimation Growth/coverage monitoring Plant/tree counting Species identification Vegetation health analysis Biomass estimation Fire detection & tracking Storm damage assessment Planting / re-planting campaign planning Deforestation / illegal logging / farming / incursion monitoring Forest mapping Glacial dynamics Coastal / soil erosion Pre-and-post event comparison (storms, landslides etc.) Forest degradation Morphology Glacial features River banks Cliff faces Beaches Volcano craters Erosion monitoring Storm damage assessment Volume estimation Beach replenishment planning River mapping & modeling River surveys Water-flow simulation Erosion monitoring Flood damage assessment Flood defense planning Control screen inspection Crack / unstable area detection Rock fall assessment 3D modeling Project planning Illegal activity detection & monitoring Compliance monitoring (e.g. overfishing, illegal logging/farming expansion, illegal entry into protected areas etc.) Basemap creation Route planning Terrain modeling