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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Environmental Microbial & Food Safety Laboratory » Research » Research Project #433679

Research Project: Evaluation of the Wild Rice Restoration Results Using the sUAS-based Imagery of the Jug Bay Natural Area in Prince Georges County, Maryland

Location: Environmental Microbial & Food Safety Laboratory

Project Number: 8042-12630-011-010-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jan 15, 2019
End Date: Jan 14, 2020

Objective:
The objective of this research is to provide technical expertise in the processing of sUAS raw imagery, in support of the PG Parks’ mission to determine change in wild rice acreages and quantify restoration success at the Jug Bay Natural Area of Patuxent Park, between 2007 and 2017, while gathering important knowledge of image processing algorithms and software, as it is related to sUAS and images containing water.

Approach:
MNCPPC will provide approximately 40,000 MicaSense RedEdge sUAS images of the Jug Bay Natural Area, to USDA-ARS for mosaicking and analysis. These images were collected by the University of Maryland’s UAS Test Site pilots in 2017. Their content provides a larger quantity of images that were captured under varied lighting conditions. The USDA-ARS will mosaic these images, make fine adjustments to the images that are being utilized for the mosaic to adjust for the varied lighting conditions and if necessary, assist in the use of ArcMap for determining change in wild rice populations from previous aerial image compilations of the same area between the years 2007 and 2017. The diversity in the imagery with varied imaging conditions will allow ARS Scientists to run further testing and comparisons of image processing algorithms and software that would otherwise be unavailable.