ABSTRACT

Small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) are increasingly available, affordable, and used by managers of cultural and natural resources for detection, inventory, documentation, and monitoring. Flight planning software applications or apps downloaded to mobile devices allow pre-planning of sUAS flights for optimal acquisition of overlapping images along parallel flight lines covering the area of interest. The flight plans are used in the field to “drive” the sUAS from take-off to landing and ensure the collected images are suitable for input to photogrammetric software for Structure from Motion (SfM) image processing. Resulting SfM products of 3D point clouds, digital surface models (DSM), and seamless orthomosaics of ultra-high spatial resolution (pixel sizes on the order of 1- to 2-cm) have revolutionized the ability of resource managers to customize maps, respond to disasters, analyze change, and document the condition of historic monuments, buildings, vegetation, and landscapes. This chapter provides practical information on the use of sUAS and SfM to create products for an historic cultural landscape, historic monuments, hurricane-damaged coastal vegetation, and storm-altered coastlines. Recommended methods described in this chapter are based on experience gained from real-world, collaborative projects by academia, federal, and state resource agencies and private industry collectively working towards developing best practices and accurate geospatial data. These nonintrusive and nondestructive methods conserve invaluable national treasures.