A low-cost drone based application for identifying and mapping of coastal fish nursery grounds

Ventura, Daniele; Bruno, M.; Lasinio, Giovanna Jona; Belluscio, Andrea; Ardizzone, Giandomenico

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2016.01.030

Cited by 131 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The latter has been considerably improved in recent years with visual underwater video technologies [35]. However, these studies require a deep knowledge of the environment in addition to considerable efforts in terms of time and experienced staff [35]. Small UASs potentially offer a low-cost support to conventional UVC techniques, providing a time-saving tool aimed at improving data from underwater surveys.…”

Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Habitat identification has been generally achieved by human underwater visual censuses (UVC) techniques [36]. The latter has been considerably improved in recent years with visual underwater video technologies [35]. However, these studies require a deep knowledge of the environment in addition to considerable efforts in terms of time and experienced staff [35].…”

Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, these habitats are the key to success for the conclusion of early life phases, providing shelter from predators and abundance of trophic resources. As a result of this siteattachment, juveniles exhibit systematic patterns of distribution, influenced by the availability of microhabitats [33][34][35]. Habitat identification has been generally achieved by human underwater visual censuses (UVC) techniques [36].…”

Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) for Environmental Monitoring: A Review with Applications in Coastal Habitats

Ventura¹,

Bonifazi²,

Gravina³

et al. 2017

Aerial Robots - Aerodynamics, Control and Applications

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Nowadays the proliferation of small unmanned aerial systems or vehicles (UAS/ Vs), formerly known as drones, coupled with an increasing interest in tools for environmental monitoring, have led to an exponential use of these unmanned aerial platforms for many applications in the most diverse fields of science. In particular, ecologists require data collected at appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions to describe ecological processes. For these reasons, we are witnessing the proliferation of UAV-based remote sensing techniques because they provide new perspectives on ecological phenomena that would otherwise be difficult to study. Therefore, we propose a brief review regarding the emerging applications of low-cost aerial platforms in the field of environmental sciences such as assessment of vegetation dynamics and forests biodiversity, wildlife research and management, map changes in freshwater marshes, river habitat mapping, and conservation and monitoring programs. In addition, we describe two applications of habitat mapping from UAS-based imagery, along the Central Mediterranean coasts, as study cases: (1) The upper limit of a Posidonia oceanica meadow was mapped to detect impacted areas, (2) high-resolution orthomosaic was used for supporting underwater visual census data in order to visualize juvenile fish densities and microhabitat use in four shallow coastal nurseries.

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Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Case Study 2: Integration Of Underwater Visual Census (Uvc) mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) for Environmental Monitoring: A Review with Applications in Coastal Habitats

Ventura¹,

Bonifazi²,

Gravina³

et al. 2017

Aerial Robots - Aerodynamics, Control and Applications

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View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Land cover was classified at four resolutions from two sets of input data using a supervised object-based maximum likelihood classification [37][38][39][40][41][42]. The workflow is diagrammed in Figure 5.…”

Section: Land Cover Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

UAS-SfM for Coastal Research: Geomorphic Feature Extraction and Land Cover Classification from High-Resolution Elevation and Optical Imagery

et al. 2017

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Abstract:The vulnerability of coastal systems to hazards such as storms and sea-level rise is typically characterized using a combination of ground and manned airborne systems that have limited spatial or temporal scales. Structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry applied to imagery acquired by unmanned aerial systems (UAS) offers a rapid and inexpensive means to produce high-resolution topographic and visual reflectance datasets that rival existing lidar and imagery standards. Here, we use SfM to produce an elevation point cloud, an orthomosaic, and a digital elevation model (DEM) from data collected by UAS at a beach and wetland site in Massachusetts, USA. We apply existing methods to (a) determine the position of shorelines and foredunes using a feature extraction routine developed for lidar point clouds and (b) map land cover from the rasterized surfaces using a supervised classification routine. In both analyses, we experimentally vary the input datasets to understand the benefits and limitations of UAS-SfM for coastal vulnerability assessment. We find that (a) geomorphic features are extracted from the SfM point cloud with near-continuous coverage and sub-meter precision, better than was possible from a recent lidar dataset covering the same area; and (b) land cover classification is greatly improved by including topographic data with visual reflectance, but changes to resolution (when <50 cm) have little influence on the classification accuracy.

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“…Terrestrial ecologists have used this technique to assess forest cover [24], river restoration [25], vineyard growth [26], and determine tree structure [27]. The growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles for remote surveying has the potential to substantially increase the use of structure from motion for a variety of ecological fields [28], and large-scale marine assessments using this technique have recently become possible [29][30][31]. Since ecological assessments generally require multiple surveys conducted over large time periods and from multiple observers, research on the reliability of structure from motion across these factors is beneficial to numerous fields of research, and is an issue that has frequently been identified by geomorphologists [32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Reliable Is Structure from Motion (SfM) over Time and between Observers? A Case Study Using Coral Reef Bommies

et al. 2017

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Recent efforts to monitor the health of coral reefs have highlighted the benefits of using structure from motion-based assessments, and despite increasing use of this technique in ecology and geomorphology, no study has attempted to quantify the precision of this technique over time and across different observers. This study determined whether 3D models of an ecologically relevant reef structure, the coral bommie, could be constructed using structure from motion and be reliably used to measure bommie volume and surface area between different observers and over time. We also determined whether the number of images used to construct a model had an impact on the final measurements. Three dimensional models were constructed of over twenty coral bommies from Heron Island, a coral cay at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. This study did not detect any significant observer effect, and there were no significant differences in measurements over four sampling days. The mean measurement error across all bommies and between observers was 15 ± 2% for volume measurements and 12 ± 1% for surface area measurements. There was no relationship between the number of pictures taken for a reconstruction and the measurements from that model, however, more photographs were necessary to be able to reconstruct complete coral bommies larger than 1 m 3 . These results suggest that structure from motion is a viable tool for ongoing monitoring of ecologically-significant coral reefs, especially to establish effects of disturbances, provided the measurement error is considered.

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A low-cost drone based application for identifying and mapping of coastal fish nursery grounds

Cited by 131 publications

References 57 publications

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) for Environmental Monitoring: A Review with Applications in Coastal Habitats

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) for Environmental Monitoring: A Review with Applications in Coastal Habitats

UAS-SfM for Coastal Research: Geomorphic Feature Extraction and Land Cover Classification from High-Resolution Elevation and Optical Imagery

How Reliable Is Structure from Motion (SfM) over Time and between Observers? A Case Study Using Coral Reef Bommies

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