The Coastal Ecosystem Mapping and Media Viability Project

The collection of field data has previously been a very manual and complicated task, wherein the strong relationship between field measured tree diameter and/or heights are used as input in allometric equations to calculate above-ground biomass and derive carbon stock estimates (see Kauffman and Donato (2012) for further details). At the time of this projects implementation (September 2015) the use of drones have never before been used to assess blue carbon ecosystems, nor as a management tool of both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. It has previously been the general consensus that using drones for high quality mapping was to be left to specific drone companies and was thus very expensive. This project used a low cost unmanned aerial vehicle and companion photogrammetry software at a pilot site to develop a procedure to assess mangrove forest ecosystems and develop innovative communications tools. The use of drones allows for fully automatic flight at a fixed height, or optionally to fly the unmanned aerial vehicle using a remote control, with the complexity of these actions depending on the complexity of the drone. Photogrammetry companion applications give the possibility to automatically calculate in real time when to optimally acquire images to cover the area as well as to enhance image attributes and characteristics. Once the images are acquired, some software vendors provide mobile/table applications to guide the user on the process of converting them into orthomosaics, point clouds, elevation models, and 3D models. This can also be done using PC software or on the cloud. I. Why use unmanned aerial vehicles (Drones) to calculate above ground biomass? So far utilizing drones to calculate above ground volume of the canopy towards figuring out carbon storage has not been tested, it is this projects goal to assess the viability of using unmanned aerial vehicles as part of any Blue Carbon Ecosystem Field survey. If successful, this would help field surveys through: • Identifying priority areas in advance to surveys, • View hard to reach areas, • Expand the area of study to a wider area. (See ( Error! Reference source not found. for previous method of collecting data from mangroves in the field), • And lower fieldtrip costs. The drone imagery can also be used in other capacities, including; • Producing bilateral studies in parallel as Blue Carbon data collection field studies such as:

• Land Use change, • Water distribution, • Payments for Ecosystem Service (PES) assessments, • State of the Environment (SOE) Assessments, • And habitat mapping/management.

The Coastal Ecosystem Mapping and Media Viability Project

Page 9 of 44