Cool Mavic Pro Project! Protecting Endangered Plants

[Ryan Jenkins]

Just wanted to tell you guys about a cool project I took part in yesterday. I work for Tennessee State Parks and have been doing some videos for my park. Our sister department, Tennessee Natural Areas, saw the videos and contacted me about helping them scout an endangered plant species from the air with the drone. My drone is still getting replaced with DJI refresh after clipping a tree limb, so I reached out to a fellow Mavic owner I only knew of through acquaintance.
He agreed to come out with me and help out our Natural Areas crew. We spent the day mapping and taking video of a couple different endangered plant species so we can better protect them by figuring out where they grow best and creating growth maps to compare year to year.
A big shout out goes to fellow Mavic owner Matt Webster for volunteering his time and equipment to help in the project!
Once I get the video together I'll try and post it up here.

 

[BorisTheSpider]

Nice project - look forward to the video

 

[kricke_de]

Great thing, I am curious to hear more about this project. I work in a nature conservation administration here in Germany so it's very interesting for me. Which plant species are you able to map with the mavic? Trees and shrubs of course, but also weeds? Looking forward to hear more about this topic [emoji5]️ thank you

 

[Sencorp]

Very nice indeed. I too would be interested in the specs and procedures of the project to maybe suggest and implement in areas here in New Zealand. The protection of native pant species is taken very serious here, and looking and identifying any type of non native plants of any kind that may be carried in on unsuspecting trampers is a problem. I think your data would be useful on coming up with ways to identify and protect.

 

[normr]

At least you figured out a way to fly in State Parks[emoji2]

 

[Ryan Jenkins]

We were surveying a plant called Bladderpod. There are several different species. It is a small white wildflower that blooms is disturbed agricultural fields. It is a remnant from when buffalo roamed the states and disturbed areas of land.

 

[kricke_de]

Great, thank you. Will that be published in a scientific paper? Being keen to hear about it. Good success

 

[landyachtz05]

Hi everyone, I'm the UAV pilot for the Oahu Invasive Species Committee (OISC) in Hawaii, we're testing out applications of the Mavic Pro for detecting invasive plants such as Miconia (Miconia calvescens) and Devil Weed (Chromolaena odorata). It's only feasible in areas without overhead canopy, and even then small plants are very difficult to see. We are working on machine learning object recognition for the footage, but it has a long way to go. Are any of you involved in a larger community of UAV users for environmental purposes?

 

[Dremundo]

Awesome job, I live in South Florida and wish I could use my MP for things like this... keep up the good work and if anyone hears of anything in Florida PM