Development and Evaluation of a Low-Cost Process to Support Vegetation Classification Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

East Coast Aquatics是一家位于新斯科舍省的生物咨询公司，专门从事湿地和溪流栖息地评估和监测，设计和实施栖息地恢复，以及评估和监测植物、海龟、鱼类和微型无脊椎动物的生物群落。植被分类是对感兴趣区域的植被进行分类和制图的过程。传统的方法测量植被网站需要一个采样的方法，使用一些部署在整个研究区域的样方。样方是一个框架，用于标记出一个特定的区域进行采样。东海岸水上运动所面临的问题是，进行这些人工评估是耗时和劳动密集型的，发生在偏远地区，可能会干扰栖息地，评估的准确性根据用于代表整个地区的采样点的数量而变化。因此，东海岸水上运动希望与南加州大学地理科学应用研究中心合作，探索使用无人驾驶航空器提高植被分类质量和效率的潜力。 该项目将探索具有成本效益的方法，包括数据收集，图像处理和图像分类的所有阶段的分类过程。

East Coast Aquatics is a Nova Scotia based biological consulting firm that specializes in conducting wetland and stream habitat assessment and monitoring, designing and implementing restoration of habitats, and assessing and monitoring the biological communities of plants, turtles, fish and micro-invertebrates. Vegetation classification is the process of classifying and mapping the vegetation in an area of interest. The traditional method for surveying a vegetation site requires a sampling approach using a number of quadrats deployed throughout the study area. A quadrat is a frame that is used to mark out a specific area to be sampled. The issue East Coast Aquatics is having is that conducting these manual assessments are time consuming and labor intensive, occur in remote areas, can disturb the habitat, and the accuracy of the assessment varies based on the number of sampling points used to represent the entire area. As a result, East Coast Aquatics would like to collaborate with NSCC's Centre of Geographic Sciences Applied Research to explore the potential for using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to improve the quality and efficiency of vegetation classification. This project will explore cost effective approaches to all stages of the classification process including data collection, image processing and image classification.