Conservation drones: Using Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (drones) in vegetation mapping and monitoring in rewilding landscapes
The topic is open for also suitable for GEM students in track 1 – GEM for Urban-Rural Interactions.
The topic is open for also suitable for GEM students in track 3 – GEM for Ecosystems & Natural Resources.
Suggested elective: Earth observation with unmanned aerial vehicles.
Internship placement could be available with Rewilding Europe partners.
One of the aims of conservation and rewilding groups in Europe is to assess whether natural grazing leads to more heterogeneous habitats with higher diversity of biophysical and ecological conditions. Natural grazing is expected to increase the area covered by grasses and create more open habitats like scattered scrubland and open forests. Homogenous large areas of bush encroachment or very closed forests – with very dense understory vegetation – increase the landscape’s vulnerability to wildfires and are less diverse than heterogeneous habitats, where more ecological niches and ecotones can be found. At a landscape level, these areas are critical to sustaining species adapted to open and closed habitats.
Monitoring is the collection and analysis of repeated observations or measurements to evaluate changes in condition and progress toward meeting a management objective. One of the cornerstones in managing protected areas is establishing and implementing monitoring protocols for the values it is set to protect.
The proposed topic aims to assess the accuracy and sensitivity of drone data required to monitor rewilding efforts in selected landscapes of Europe. It is hypothesised that high-resolution georeferenced imagery acquired with UAS can minimise laborious field data collection and increase the quantity and quality of data. Potential research questions can be to assess the effect of image (spatial) resolution on land cover classification accuracy, landscape heterogeneity metrics and indicators.
Previous theses on similar subjects:
No need to be changed. The topic fits within the SIS and SPG core areas