Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/N008952/1
Enhanced, cost-effective assessment of rainforest condition using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor DA Coomes, University of Cambridge, Plant Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Cambridge, Plant Sciences
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Terrestrial
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Conservation Ecology
- Biodiversity conservation
- Conservation management
- Ecosystem services
- Land use change
- Tropical forests
- Survey & Monitoring
- Abstract:
- Tropical rain forests are the most diverse terrestrial biome, but have suffered exceptionally high rates of deforestation over the past 50 years. Southeast Asia in particular has the highest concentration of biodiversity hotspots, and the highest rate of deforestation in recent decades. Lowland Sumatra, for example, has lost 96% of its lowland terra-firma forest since 1900. Overall, there are approximately a billion hectares of degraded land in the tropics, and restoration of tropical forests has been recognised as significant opportunity for achieving multiple societal goals, including provisioning of sustainable livelihoods, enhancing ecosystem services and providing habitat for forest dependent species, including many species of conservation concern. A large number of studies over the past few years have demonstrated the high conservation value and potential to supply ecosystem services of logged over forests. However, as a consequence of their depleted timber resource logged over forests are often perceived to have low economic value, which typically results in their conversion to Oil Palm or Acacia plantations. In 2007, in an effort to address this problem, the Indonesian government established a new type of forest concession licence, known as an Ecosystem Restoration Concession (ERC). Under an ERC licence, the goal is to restore the forest to 'ecological balance', although as a step towards meeting this goal the development of non-timber forest products and certain timbers (e.g. invasive species) may be permitted. One of the main challenges to scaling up restoration technologies to large, landscape scale restoration efforts, such as ERCs, is the need to obtain accurate, up-to-date information on site conditions over a large area. Accurate information on site conditions is essential for selecting the appropriate intervention, for example whether an area requires enrichment planting or selective thinning or both will depend on the amount of natural regeneration of late succession species and the density of pioneers in the canopy, amongst other factors. Current methods using remote sensing with satellite imagery are effective in denoting coarse categories of forest quality and recognising major features, such as cleared areas and water bodies, but do not provide sufficient information on site condition to permit decisions about restoration inventions. Conversely, ground-based surveys are expensive and can only ever cover a small proportion of the area, resulting in interpolations between survey locations that again provide insufficient information to make informed decisions concerning restoration interventions. Hence at Harapan Rainforest, a 98,000 ha ERC in south-central Sumatra, we have been pioneering the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to survey areas and produce accurate, up-to-date maps of site conditions. The use of UAVs to enhance land-use decision-making and conservation has ballooned in recent years and rapid advances have been made in the technology behind the deployment of UAVs and in the tools available to analyse the resultant imagery. Nevertheless, within this rapidly moving field there remain a number of critical gaps, including analytical tools necessary to identify and use features within UAV derived images for assessment of site conditions. Hence, the overall goal of this CASE PhD studentship is to develop such tools, with the following aims: - identify features within UAV imagery that may provide information on site disturbance condition, carbon storage and key species associated with successful regeneration; - explore the use of alternative sensors, such as Near Infra-Red and multispectral sensors, to differentiate plant species from the imagery; - develop tools / algorithms for the combination of features in the assessment of site conditions; automate the process and bundle the tools into a convenient open-source platform. We will develop innovative tool of practical use in restoration
- NERC Reference:
- NE/N008952/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £98,302
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - RTSG | Total - Student Stipend |
|---|---|---|
| £20,675 | £11,000 | £66,628 |
If you need further help, please read the user guide.