Aveiro University of Technology puts drone watching forests – publico

                 

                         
                     

                 

 
                         

A team at the University of Aveiro has developed a technology that, when integrated into a drone (unmanned aircraft), allows us to evaluate the consequences of the lack of water or nutrients, disease or insect attack and fungi have on forests. In the next phase, the team wants the project also reaches the farms.

                     

                         The initial aim of the project is simple. “Changing the paradigm of monotorização of forests, which is time consuming when performed and made by technicians on the ground”, indicates the University of Aveiro (UA) in a statement.

Jan Jacob Keizer, researcher of the Department of Environment and Planning the AU, said that was developed “a system for monitoring eucalyptus plantations, taking into account the economic importance of plantations, not only in Portugal but also in many other regions of the world, for example, Brazil.” And why eucalyptus? It is the dominant tree species in the country and, according to the investigator, now accounts for over 6% of the total forest area totaling 812,000 hectares.

Due to the size of the area concerned, using a drone can facilitate monitoring task. According to the AU, the equipment with new technology “can monitor 50 thousand square meters every ten minutes.”

In partnership with the Biology and Chemistry departments of the AU and the Superior School of Technology and Management Agueda, the team created a technology that makes a monitoring for multispectral images, “images acquired at different wavelengths which result in separate capture colors” that are captured through the drone , rotary wing with electric propulsion, equipped with a multispectral sensor.

Jan Jacob Keizer indicates that images are then used ‘to quantify spatially explicitly, the degree of impact of various factors stress in the growth of both a plantation as a whole as individual trees. ” In flight is possible, for example, “evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment against a pest or to determine the mortality newly planted plants days after frost or drought”.

drones AU may be sent on mission on request of forest producers.