PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
December 2014
1089
I
ntroduction
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is re-
sponsible for protecting and managing the natural
resources and heritage on almost 20% of the land in
the United States. The DOI’s mission requires ac-
cess to remotely sensed data over vast lands, includ-
ing areas that are remote and potentially dangerous
to access. The challenges associated with meeting
this requirement for scientific data and information
about our public lands, their ecosystems, and nat-
ural resources have produced many innovative re-
mote sensing strategies. Although DOI scientists can
obtain very accurate
in situ
data based on ground
measurements and sample collections, the scale of
public lands makes this approach unrealistic for a
large area or periodic surveys. Sensors aboard pilot-
ed aircraft can, and frequently do, provide large area
coverage with high-resolution data. But increasing
costs and potential safety issues, such as pilot physi-
ology, can limit their availability. The fact that many
of these manned aircraft flights must take place in
By Bruce K. Quirk and Michael E. Hutt
areas that can be remote and often dangerous to
access, like the north slope of Alaska or the Ever-
glades, only increases these concerns. Also, manned
aircraft flights may not be feasible due to the neces-
sity for low-altitude flying and hazardous weather
conditions. Although satellite data have proven to
be a vital resource through the Landsat and other
earth observation missions, they have limitations
related to spatial and spectral resolutions, weath-
er conditions, and acquisition timeframes due to
orbital dependencies. In response to these ongoing
data collection challenges it is crucial for the DOI to
continually evaluate new technologies with an em-
phasis on finding safer, lower cost, and more flexible
methods for collecting remotely sensed data.
One promising new technology for acquiring these
vital data is Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).
UAS have often been described as the ideal solution
for airborne missions characterized as “dull, dirty,
or dangerous” because they operate as an aircraft,
but without a human pilot on board. Their flight is
