Drone Monitoring
Monitoring
DEI works to manage forests around the nation for ecological restoration, watershed protection and fireshed protection. As these thinning activities are actively employed we have built a robust drone monitoring program to ensure our targets are being achieved and to aid our management into the future. Drone monitoring is a rapidly evolving technology that can enhance on the ground inventories and biometrics and is a much cheaper solution for aerial photography and remote sensing than utilizing helicopters and manned airplanes. DEI actively employs drone monitoring for qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative
By utilizing drones we are able to take thousands of photos over one treatment area before operations, during and after they finish. After each flight we take the photos and stitch them together to produce an orthomosaic of the treatment area in fine resolution. These orthomosaics can then be analyzed for each phase of a operation to show how much forest density was changed, how many trees per acre were removed, how canopy spatial metrics were changed to reduce crown fire potential and or snow capture for water transmission. Additionally these orthomosaics can be used to conduct inspections during operations to ensure the harvest/thinnings are being done to specification/prescription.
Qualitative
Drones allow a birds eye view of the impact a forest thinning has on the greater landscape. This allows fiscal agents, government officials, land managers/owners and others to oversee the operations on their land from a computer anywhere. These photos and videos are able to tell a story that no words can adequately express.
The video excerpt below is from a Rio Grande Water Fund conference that DEI spoke at about drone monitoring.
The full link of the conference can be found at:
DEI is currently Federal Aviation Administration part 107 certified for commercial drone operations.
