Drones In The Forest

A recent trip into the forest for a drone talk and demonstration took us into OSU’s Matteson Demonstration Forest located near Hagg Lake.
OSU Extension Agents Amy Grotta and Victor Villegas explained the basics. Both fixed wing and helicopter drones (unmaned vehicles) can be used for a wide variety of applications in the forest.
Imagine remote, craggy terrain that could be dangerous to traverse (not a stretch of the imagination around here). A drone could be used to map the area, investigate tree inventory and crown density, find wildlife corridors, identify and monitor insect and disease areas and hundreds of other uses.
Drones can be outfitted with cameras to take detailed color photos and video, map boundaries with GPS/GIS accuracy, use infrared photography, thermal imaging, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and DEM (Digital elevation Model) to produce multi-layered screen shots of land, vegetation and wildlife. In areas that are not accessible to humans, pods of seeds that contain nutrients for the first year of growth can be shot Some drones carry payloads of small firebombs, doing the dangerous work of setting backfires(creating fire-induced firebreak lines) during active forest fires.
The demonstration then moved out into the forest clearing to give the group a real-flight experience.
Captain Patrick walked us through the pre-flight check list covering the rudimentary requirements and observations needed for a safe flight.

With the take-off and landing pad no bigger than the edge of a table, the drone was powered up and brought to hover above the trees. From here the onboard camera was brought on-line where monitors on the ground could pinpoint the areas that were of interest.
On this day, the camera was trained on a 5 acre clear cut that was about a 1/4 mile away. From the lofty perch the drone was able to take detailed photos and video of the area in question from several angles including taking shots straight down to see the canopy density around the clear cut.
More information can be found at Deeproot blog.