Drones and conservation

General Drone Discussion
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Has any one experience of using drone photos and videos as part of conservation monitoring especially woodland and hillside? Any observations, tips etc.

I have a mavic air.

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Think @Longstride got some experience with that

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I dabble :wink:

What are you looking to do? Mavic air will be fine for most things. I use Pix4Dcapture for 3D modelling and mapping then I export for either 3D printing or géo tagged ortho mapping in GIS packages like Arc or QGis (free).

Happy to chat!

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I my uni days I got Arc GIS to catégorisé plant/tree species from the RGB values of a woodland canopy and grasslands and heathlands.

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Now who’s being geeky! :wink:

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Be careful not to hit the trees! :rofl::rofl:

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That’s just “Drone conservation”. :+1:

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We’re currently using ours for monitoring badger setts for Scottish Badgers. It is very useful in seeing the effect of forestry operations on the surrounding terrain. Here’s an example of the Forestry Commission clear felling around a major sett. They are legally bound to leave 45 metres around a sett but you can see here there are no corridors to other areas of woodland and we are hoping to get them to increase the size of their buffer zone. BTW, taken with Mavic Air.
Glad to chat more.

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A post was split to a new topic: What version of Pix4D do you use?

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Sounds like more than a dabble! :joy:

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Thanks @ash2020 and @Longstride I will start seperate discussions with you off line.

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That’d be a shame mate :confused:

I personally, and I’m sure some others, are fascinated by this kind of stuff and love reading about it :slight_smile:

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@PingSpike I agree and will continue to discuss the topic here in general detail. I would like to explain privately what I am doing first to our two contributors and gain from their experience. I am trying to be a responsible droner. :smiley:

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I’m very involved in cleaning some local beaches of industrial plastic waste and trying to name and shame a particular manufacturer. My background is in spectrometry and my pet project, if I could afford it, would be to mount a Hyperspectral imaging camera on a drone, which is like a spectrometer but builds up an image by scanning. This would detect different varieties of microplastics. Trouble is, the camera could be 50K and would need a hefty drone to lift it. Dream on.

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Ever looked in to Innovate UK funding for such a project @ash2020?

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Thanks Rich. That’s a good idea. I never thought of it, even thought the company I work for now as a subcontractor got a large Innovate UK grant. I will investigate. Cheers.

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If you want to list Grey Arrows Drone Club as the Industry Partner, just shout :wink:

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Sorry for the delay in replying to this thread.

I am interested in using the drone for what it is does best giving aerial perspective of a landscape to help researchers learn more. The questions in my head are:

  • are stills the best medium for this
  • what height is most effective
  • How do you work out how many stills to take over a few acres of a hillside.
  • are video fly bys useful
  • What setting are best for still photography.
  • I have been told that nd filters are useful for flattening the landscape does this help interpretation of the features
  • there are birds nesting in the area I will be flying how can I best avoid upsetting them

ronidog

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I’ve just found that there is a young lass doing a phd at the Scottish Marine uni (SAMS), up the road, on exactly that topic, Marine plastic waste on beaches. She already has a 35K camera so little point me duplicating the effort :frowning:

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That’s a shame. Perhaps there is another angle you could look at.

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