There is a well-recognized value of flight technology to support monitoring and management of large geographic areas. However, access has long been too costly for general use in conservation projects, other than critical situations. Due to continued advances in robotics and mapping, this has started to change.
Such devices are changing what is possible in environmental monitoring, yet still face practical obstacles to widespread adoption, regulation, and deployment. In collaboration with existing open source
UAS mapping module of the OLN aims to streamline there being applied to this issue, to improve project support resources.
Since the early 2000s, smartphone-era improvements in components from GPS receivers and (CMOS) camera sensors, batteries and radio, has made possible a new generation of unoccupied airborne systems (UAS), or 'drones'.
However, the first generation of consumer UAVs a decade ago was still relatively primitive, and concerns over abuse resulted in regulations and limitations.
Until recently, professional-grade solutions for data capture remained expensive and heavy. These challenges in turn raised the effort for data to be collected on utility of these solutions, and potential to be further improved.
Nonetheless, the last several generations of these devices have sufficient accuracy to be useful for creation of 'survey-grade' orthographic maps.
Evidence to support use in environmental monitoring is now becoming very accepted, but further research and refinement of the capability is needed (e.g. Mugnai et al., 2022; Myburgh et al. 2021).
The reduced entry barrier has resulted in a surge of adoption and global availability of drone pilots, who can easily be found via online platforms, or trained in a short period with locally available hardware.
As countries such as Canada reduce restrictions for certain classes and usage types of these devices, newly monitoring capabilities are becoming feasible.
In order to process the imagery collected during a drone mapping process, the system requires a processing 'pipeline'. Commercial software is available, but has a considerable expense and does not match the usage requirements of the system.
By connecting to software like Open Drone Map, project teams - and members - can collect and process data, and share with relevant stakeholders.
By reducing the cost and time/experience needed for UAS data collection to be planned, scheduled, completed, processed and shared, the Open Landscape Network will make new monitoring paradigms - and interventions - feasible.
Performing low-altitude photogrammetric surveys, a comparitive analysis of user-grade unmanned aircraft systems. Mugnai, Francesco, Longinotti, Pietro, Vezzosi, Frencesco, Tucci, Grazia. Applied Geomatics. 14. 211-223. DOI: 10.1007/s12518-022-00421-7
The application and limitations of a low-cost UAV platform and open-source software combination for ecological mapping and monitoring. Myburgh, Albert, Botha, Hannes, Dones, Colleen T, and Woodborne, Stephan M. (2021). African Journal of Wildlife Research. 51. 166-177. DOI: 10.3957/056.051.0166
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