Drones and their uses
Little Things ~ Big Results
According to Rob Jordan, a communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, like undiscovered groves of giant redwoods, centuries-old living corals remains unmapped and unmeasured.
Coral reefs refer to the “rainforests of the oceans”. They represent a collection of biological communities which denote one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. They are very important because they protect from coastlines erosion and sand for beaches, also they represent a big part of tourists’ attractions.
For more information on coral reefs:
http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/habitat/coral_index.cfm
Coral Reefs and Polar Ice
Coral Reefs
No satellite mission covers the poles; so Drones are being used.
Drones are being used in the polar ice to monitor the melting of the ice, polar bears, sea lions and whales. First, they help out to watch out for wildlife when oil companies are setting up their pipelines and help monitor oil spills. As because of the harsh cold temperatures, the battery life of a drone in the Arctic or Antarctic is very short.
For more information:
http://www.livescience.com/39194-drones-monitor-arctic.html
MIZOPEX, The Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes Experiment, is one the contributed projects of NOAA to study how the ice is melting in polar sea ice. This project is using three different drones to do the study: NASA’s SIERRA; the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ In situ Scan Eagles; and CU's DataHawk, a micro-UAS. These drones are using a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum such as thermal wavelengths, visible, Radar and so on.
For more information:
Polar Ice
One example of drone-mapping coral reef is the one developed by a Stanford Aeronautics graduate student Ved CHirayath. The drone is equipped with a camera system that can map the coral reefs from up to 200 feet in the air. It uses the visible wavelengths as Radar cannot penetrate water surface and Sonar does not work well with shallow water and the maps tend to be distorted. The developed software is called Fluid Lensing. The software is able to remove ripples made by water movement and uses magnification to enhance the image.Since coral reefs are dying due to global climate change, coral bleaching, Drones are started to be used to accurately locate the reefs and study them by overlaying the maps that the drones make and water temperature map on a census of the oldest corals.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/october/coral-reefs-drones-101613.html
Another system developed by the Galileo Group Inc. uses hyperspectral imaging to map sea grass beds and coral reefs in Florida keys.