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University of Arkansas Using Lidar to Study Forests

image of University of Arkansas will use drone lidar
University of Arkansas will use drone lidar

The University of Arkansas-Monticello’s “Top Gun” is putting his piloting skills to use to assess the health of the campus forest.

From an article in the MyArklamiss by Lon Tegels.

Dr. Hamdi Zurqani, assistant professor of geospatial science, joined the UAM College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources (CFANR) in the fall of 2021.

“Drones have recently become an essential tool for forest management and forest health monitoring,” he said. “So, we purchased this drone to help us get accurate data for every tree in our forests.”

UAM flies a DJI Matrice 300 RTX — a $60,000 tool — to assess conditions the university’s 1,080 acres of forest. The drone has a flight time of about 45 to 55 minutes depending on whether it carries a payload. Its has thermal, zoom, wide-angle and distance finder capabilities.

“This drone will be utilized to characterize key indicators of urban forest health and investigate statistical relationships between forest health, such as individual forest trees and species, and vegetation indices derived from the drone imagery,” said Zurqani. “It will also be utilized to calculate the trees’ heights and crown widths and use this information to calculate how much carbon is held in its above-ground biomass.”

Check out their work at this link.

Fast-developing technology

“Drone-based remote sensing is one of the fastest-developing suites of technologies, with high impacts on improving the accuracy and efficiency of managing natural resources and agricultural operations,” said CFANR Dean Michael Blazier. “We’re very fortunate in our College to have a professor of Dr. Zurqani’s caliber to lead the way for us in this field. He has a robust research program underway for advancing the capabilities of drone-based remote sensing, and our graduate and undergraduate students benefit greatly from how he is incorporating his leading-edge work into the classroom.”

For the complete article on the University of Arkansas CLICK HERE.

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