Capabılıtıes of usıng UAVs to determıne forest road excavatıon volumes ın mountaınous areas

Abstract

Decision support systems based on spatial data are widely used in some countries for planning production activitiesin forestry and designing forest roads. In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been playingan active role in the production of high resolution and accurate digital elevation models (DEMs) of forested areas.In the preparation of progress payments for forest road construction works, the workload is high, while the feethat has to be paid to the contractor company after the completion of the road construction is determined accordingto the final cost in the progress payment schedules. In this study, the applicability of UAV technology for determiningforest road cut volume and land classification was investigated. A 640-meter section of the forest roadcoded 001 of Taşlıyayla Forest Management Sub-Directorate (Bolu/Türkiye) was examined in the study. Flightswith an UAV (drone) were carried out in autonomous mode before and after the construction of the road examinedin the study. In addition, in order to determine the amount of cut, measurements of the geometric characteristicsof the road were made in the field after the road construction. As a result of the study, 2189 m³ cut volumewas found with the UAV data with an average error of 3 cm. According to the field measurement results, theamount of cut was determined as 2080 m³. A difference of +5% was found between the UAV data and the fieldmeasurement results. In addition, using the JavaScript coding language on the Google Earth Engine platform, soil(46%) and loose soil (54%) land classification was identified from the orthophoto images. The obtained resultsreveal the usability of UAVs in determining forest road volumes.