Wetland Monitoring

Client:  Kaiwaiwai Dairies Ltd
Date:  Ongoing

We developed and tested a remote sensing method to monitor the health of the Kaiwaiwai constructed wetland for Kaiwaiwai Dairies Ltd.  The wetland is planted with native species covering nearly a hectare and was constructed in September 2014. 

Ground-level monitoring of a constructed wetland is time-consuming, working in and along inundated areas can be labour intensive and includes a risk to personal health and safety.  Often the functioning of a wetland is over or underestimated using conventional methods only.  The owners of the Kaiwaiwai dairy farm needed a better understanding of the efficiency, biomass accumulation in the wetland and the carbon sequestration services that the wetland supplies.  High-resolution UAV monitoring provides the opportunity for rapid data collection and decision-makers to “see landscape-scale patterns created by the locations of indicators relative to one another”.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) monitoring seemed to be a viable and cost-effective method to enhance the ground level monitoring of the wetland.

Key Aspects:

• UAV photogrammetry and remote sensing
• Object detection and image interpretation
• Wetland mapping and health assessment
• Vegetation mapping and assessment
• 3D modelling and visualisation
• Adaptive management