Remote sensing has become a tool of choice for site investigations, environmental monitoring and study area mapping in large, remote or inaccessible areas. The reduction in cost along with significant improvement in optics has made drones an attractive option for generating aerial imagery from which land use, plant density, habitat and assemblages and even soil chemistry can be assessed.
As part of the DEFRA funded project DPLUS051, we are researching the habitat, climate and water resources of the St Helena cloud forest, to understand their importance in providing a reliable drinking water supply to the island. We are trialling aerial mapping on the island for the first time to support ground based vegetation mapping and land use mapping. The data will also be used to support the calculation of a water balance for the study area.
When choosing a drone for mapping the cloud forest we were looking for a small, easy to operate and repair drone which had a small enough payload to enable the study team to gain certification and operate within the islands Aerodrome Traffic Zone (ATZ) and Control Zone (CTR). The drone also needed to be stationary over areas of interest. As a consequence we selected a DJI Phantom 4 quadcopter over a fixed wing solution, as the Phantom 4 offered the best balance of cost, simplicity of operation and image resolution for the research project.
We’re currently evaluating the first few sets of flight data, but have posted some images of post-processed digital terrain model data from the study area. We’ll talk more about the data collection and lessons learned in another post.
