PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
December 2014
1093
“The Department’s
field-level staff
are driving the
investigations of
UAS technology.”
Vista NWR serves as a major stopover
point during migration, which makes
it a perfect location for conducting an
accurate population count.
These surveys are traditionally con-
ducted by using fixed-wing aircraft,
which can place both birds and staff
at risk of mid-air collisions, or time
consuming ground-count methods,
where biologists in the field attempt to
visually enumerate the birds with sec-
tional surveys. Safe completion of the
UAS flights (Figure 4) clearly demon-
strated that the DOI’s sUAS could be
flown without disruption to the cranes
and that the sensor payloads could
identify their heat signature.
The population count from the
UAS data was compared to a simul-
taneous ground-count conducted by the FWS to get
an “observed” population count. Results of the com-
parison between the ground based and UAS popu-
lation counts resulted in a 4.6% difference, which
was acceptable to the wildlife biologists. The cost of
the UAS mission (<$3,000) was substantially less
than the cost of a similar fixed wing manned air-
craft survey (~$30,000). These results established
that utilizing UAS to perform population counts for
Sandhill cranes is both safe and cost effective, and
produces accurate results.
Abandoned Solid Waste Removal
In March 2013, the USGS, in cooperation with the
National Park Service (NPS) Mojave National Pre-
serve, flew proof of concept sUAS missions to locate
and survey abandoned solid waste for historical as-
sessment potential and cleanup. The primary objec-
tive was to determine if sUAS technology could pro-
vide cost-effective, high-resolution aerial imagery in
this isolated part of southeastern San Bernardino
County that could be used to provide a historical
record, as well as aiding the difficult task of identi-
fying abandoned solid waste materials, determining
their historical significance, and supporting cleanup
efforts. This mission successfully demonstrated the
UAS’s ability to function as a low altitude reconnais-
sance and monitoring tool. The image data acquired
with the sUAS could be used, either in real-time or
during post-processing, to provide coordinates for
Figure 4. Ground track for Raven aerial survey (USGS, FWS, Google).
the location of identified materials (Figure 5). Hav-
ing access to this geographic coordinate information
allows the inspectors to save time by easily navigat-
ing directly to the required inspection sites.
An unexpected benefit from this high-resolution
imagery was its ability to distinguish various vegeta-
tion types, including Joshua trees (Figure 6). Image
data with this level of resolution can be
used with automated extraction tech-
niques to create vegetation information,
which would provide resource managers
with a reliable method for creating vege-
tation inventories.
Other OT&E mission summaries can
be found at the USGS NUPO website,
Figure 5. UAS image of abandoned materials in the
Mojave National Preserve (USGS).
