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From pretty pictures to real data, real information and real impact from drones: A practical manual for mapping seagrass meadows from drone-imagery using open-access software
University of the Sunshine Coast
2018
Abstract
Coastal environments and the ecosystem services they provide are of vital importance to societies as 1.9 billion people globally live within 100 km of the coast. Seagrass meadows provide several ecosystem services, including the provision of habitat that supports commercial and recreational fisheries, nutrient cycling and sediment stabilization. Vegetated coastal habitats including tidal marsh, mangrove and seagrass, play a significant role globally in sequestering carbon dioxide, yet there is a significant global decline in these habitats due to cumulative impact of human activities and rapid changes in the global climate.
Conservation of existing seagrass meadows is always better than trying to restore them after loss. Either way, successful conservation and restoration of seagrass requires at least baseline knowledge of where seagrass meadows are located, their extent and composition and how/why they change over time. However, these biophysical datasets are seldom available at appropriate spatial and temporal scales due to the inherent challenges of working in coastal settings.
Drones are allowing the acquisition of very-high spatial resolution spatial data (pixel sizes in the order of centimetres) across relatively large areas (100s of hectares) with great flexibility in the timing and frequency of image capture. This effectively bridges the gap between detailed field data collection and synoptic remotely-sensed data and offers an unprecedented opportunity to study and monitor coastal habitats.+
This manual has been developed as a simple and practical guide to derive baseline information about seagrass meadows (location and extent) from images acquired with consumer-grade drones. The aim is to provide a basic overview of how to turn individual, overlapping photos into an undistorted image mosaic from which precise measurements can be undertaken.
Many software packages are available commercially to perform such analysis with different levels of complexity. However, this manual outlines the simplest workflow based on free and open-source software to make it more accessible and relevant to community and citizen science groups.
Details
- Title
- From pretty pictures to real data, real information and real impact from drones: A practical manual for mapping seagrass meadows from drone-imagery using open-access software
- Authors
- Javier Leon (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Publication details
- 26 pages
- Publisher
- University of the Sunshine Coast
- Date published
- 2018
- Copyright note
- © University of the Sunshine Coast. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
- Grant note
- This manual has been developed as a collaboration between University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) and Noosa Integrated Catchment Association (NICA) with support from the Norman Wettenhall Foundation Small Environmental Grants Scheme.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering; Sustainability Research Cluster
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99743698202621
- Output Type
- Report
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