Landscape mapping with drones (UAVs/UAS/RPAS) doesn’t get more challenging than flying over remote, windy islands without disturbing the birds, as one team of climate change researchers discovered…

1. Using drones to map
geomorphological features
in the Subantarctics

2. One of the keys to better
understanding climate change
is to paint a more accurate picture
of environmental conditions
in the distant past

3. A good place to
measure
environmental
change over such
long timescales?
New
Subantarctic Islands

4. In November 2014, a team of
researchers from the Climate
Change Research Centre at the
University of New South Wales
set out to do just

5. This team decided
to map the
Musgrave
geomorphological
features, since
these provide
evidence of past
glaciation

6. complex geomorphology, so we
wanted to map it, in high resolution,
and create a 3D model that we could
use to identify and quantify past
Dr. Zoë
Thomas, a research associate
By then taking sediment cores, we
could also get an idea of what the
past vegetation and environmental

7. So why did the researchers
decide to use a drone?

8. No other method
of data collection
could provide the
imagery required
in the time
available.
There were
3 key reasons

9. Speed
#1

10. #2
Difficult terrain

11. High-resolution
imagery
#3

12. To map this area would
have taken us weeks using
traditional in-situ field
explains

13. resolution of the Landsat
imagery is 30 metres, much
lower than the 8.8 cm per
pixel our eBee achieved
she adds

14. choice to use
a senseFly
eBee also
brought an
additional
benefit

15. low noise is important
when working in protected areas
that contain large bird
says Thomas

16. But carrying out the drone flights
was not all plain
The Subantarctic islands are
located in the latitudes of the
strong trade winds, so finding
windows of opportunity to fly the
drone was always going to be a
challenge says

17. How did
they do it?

18. When planning each
eMotion software, the
team specified a
desired ground
resolution of 8.8
cm/pixel, with image
overlaps of 70%
lateral and 75%
longitudinal.

19. The team took a total
of 152 high-
resolution RGB
images over the
course of two
20-25 minute flights

20. The result?

21. These images were used to create the digital
surface model required to identify
geomorphological features

22. incredible, allowing us to identify a moraine
feature that we had not picked up at all on
the Landsat imagery reports
The ability to identify features like
this really helps us improve our
understanding of glacier flow lines

23. 1 Identify site
of interest
2 Identify
suitable area for
drone to map
3 Identify take-
off/landing
locations
4 Wait for
suitable weather
conditions
5 Fly the drone
6 Process drone
images &
generate 3D DSM
7 Analyse drone
data
PROJECT WORKFLOW

24. PROJECT STATISTICS

25. For more information about using drones
for environmental applications, visit:
www.sensefly.com/applications/
environmental-protection.html