Airborne Light Detection and Ranging, called LiDAR, has used aircraft lasers to map large forested areas for over 30 years, but high costs and lack of color images have made it a less efficient resource for describing tree variation at smaller scales.
Since 2010, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have emerged as an alternate technology that can provide cost-effective, high-resolution images for mapping local forest areas. While unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been used in forests over the past several years, basic questions about their efficacy in forest management have gone unanswered until now.
A team led by Colorado State University researchers spent the past three years testing UAS in Western ponderosa pine forests. A series of three new research articles recently published in Forests, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, and Remote Sensing of Environment tackle foundational aspects for using UAS specifically as a spatial forest monitoring and management tool. Wade Tinkham, the project lead, said the team’s collective results offer consistent parameters to improve forest management decision-making processes.
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