Wetland Monitoring

Client:  Kaiwaiwai Dairies Ltd
Date:  Ongoing

PDP 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 decisionmakers 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
• Adaptice management