Riparian Vegetation Monitoring Effectiveness: UAVs (drones) vs. Field Crews
Luke Javernick1* , Ben Bloodworth2*
1River Science
2RiversEdge West, Grand Junction, CO; bbloodworth@riversedgewest.org
An integral part of any restoration project is monitoring the success of implementation activities and determining management strategies moving forward. Historically, restoration site monitoring has been accomplished by trained field personnel using either paper forms or electronic tablets linked to web-based data repositories. With the advent and use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in various field applications around the world, we were surprised to find that little to no data were available concerning the utilization of UAVs for vegetation monitoring in the field. This project was initiated to determine the feasibility of using UAVs to gather vegetation data and how these data compared to those gathered by field crews. Interviews were conducted and detailed questionnaires were developed and supplied to several UAV operators, as well as a number of field crew leads, to establish which data were being collected by crews and which data might be collected by UAVs. Information concerning time spent to collect monitoring data, end products, and costs were also gathered and compared. In addition to the information received through the questionnaires/interviews, a day was spent onsite gathering UAV data in the Dolores River valley. This presentation will briefly touch on field crew monitoring and expectations and then delve more deeply into the data collected through the use of the UAV. Direct comparisons of field crew-collected data to UAV-collected data will be provided, additional products available due to the use of UAVs will be discussed, and suggestions and recommendations for the incorporation of UAVs into future vegetation monitoring efforts will be supplied.