Review article
https://doi.org/10.5552/crojfe.2022.1727
Application of UAS for Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems – A Review of Experience and Knowledge
Kristijan Tomljanović
; Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology University of Zagreb Svetošimunska 23 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Antonija Kolar
; Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology University of Zagreb Svetošimunska 23 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Andreja Đuka
; Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology University of Zagreb Svetošimunska 23 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Milivoj Franjević
; Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology University of Zagreb Svetošimunska 23 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Luka Jurjević
; Geo Unit d.o.o. Stanka Vraza 8 23000 Zadar CROATIA
Iva Matak
; Lavoslava Ružičke 3 43000 Bjelovar CROATIA
Damir Ugarković
; Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology University of Zagreb Svetošimunska 23 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Ivan Balenović
; Division for Forest Management and Forestry Economics Croatian Forest Research Institute Trnjanska cesta 35 10000 Zagreb CROATIA
Abstract
In the last couple of years, there have been a great number of articles that cover and emphasize
the advantages and possibilities that UAS (Unmanned Air System) offers in forest ecosystem
research. In the available research, alongside UAS, the importance of developing sensors that
are designed to be used with UAV (Unamnned Air Vehicle), a flight programming software
and UAS collected data processing software have been pointed out. With the widespread use
of high-precision sensors and accompanying software in forestry, it is possible to obtain accurate
data in a short time that replaces long-term manpower in the field with equal or in some
cases, such as windthrow calculation or wildlife counting, greater accuracy. The former practice
of manual imagery processing is being partly replaced with automated approaches. The
paper analyses studies that deal with some form of application of UAS in forestry, e.g. forest
inventory, forest operations, ecological monitoring, forest pests and forest fires, and wildlife
monitoring. In the forest inventory, a large number of studies deal with the possibilities of
applying UAS in mapping vegetation and individual trees, morphological research of individual
parts of trees, surface analysis, etc. The use of remote and proximal sensing technologies
in forest engineering has mainly been focused on defining surface roughness and topology,
road geometry, planning and maintenance, ground-based and cable-based harvesting and soil
characteristics and displacement. Wildfire monitoring already relies heavily on the use of UAS
and thermal cameras in operations, and it is similar to the mapping of windthrow or directions
of the spread of certain insects important for forestry. In wildlife research, numerous studies
deal with abundance research of individual terrestrial birds and mammals using UAS thermal
imagery. With some drawbacks such as wildlife disturbance or limited UAV range, common
to most of the processed studies are positive attitudes regarding the application of UAS in
forestry sensing and monitoring, which is slowly becoming a common operative practice, with
the scientists’ focus being on developing automated approaches in UAS imagery processing.
Reducing the error by improving the technological characteristics of the sensors will in the
long run reduce the number of people required to collect data important for forestry, reduce
risks and in some cases increase accuracy.
Keywords
UAS, forest ecosystems monitoring, forest operations, remote sensing
Hrčak ID:
290865
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2022.
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