Parks & conservation

UHD Videography

Building on almost 2 decades of work in conservation biology on 4 continents, T4D is uniquely placed to integrate UAS technology with environmental studies.

The use of small multirotor UAS (which are easy to transport yet capable of collecting very high quality data) is ideal for:

-carrying out wildlife population surveys

-record UHD footage for fundraising and/or educational purposes.

Hungry Whale Sharks of Cendrawasih Bay (West Papua, Indonesia) from GG on Vimeo.

Wayag - Raja Ampat: Morning of the Earth from GG on Vimeo.

Large- & small-scale aerial surveying

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The characteristics of the survey area as well as specific data requirements determine our choice of survey platform and sensor payload. For large-scale surveys, T4D uses both manned and unmanned systems, such as a range of Cessnas (areas >500 sq.km), our UAV Factory Penguin C fixed-wing drone, which we can fly BVLOS (beyond visual line-of-sight), and a host of smaller multi-rotor UAS. The end goal is to provide our clients with the most cost-effective solution. Here is a selection of T4D's data products ordered by sensor type.

Ultra-high resolution aiborne LiDAR

Perth, Queensland

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) imagery of a Perth, WA, neighborhood collected with a Velodyne HD-L 32 LiDAR sensor aboard an Aerial Intelligence HL-Q quadcopter. Colours = elevation. The HD-L 32 collects data at 700 MHz. Each data point that forms the image is georeferenced to ± 3 cm in X, Y, Z.

LiDAR / Sonar: seamless datasets

Mid-Brisbane river, Queensland

Shallow-water bathymetry acquired by iXsurvey with Kongsberg EM2040C multibeam echosounder and ASCII gridded at 0.5 m resolution, and airborne LiDAR data collected with an Optech Galaxy LiDAR aboard a Cessna 208 (resolution=1 m). Colour gradient: elevation (m) above (blue) and below the water line (purple).

RGB Photogrammetry

Beach erosion monitoring / nourishment

Top: RGB Orthomosaic of Shelly Beach, Queensland,  obtained with a DJI Inspire 1 and ground control points georeferenced with RTK GPS. Bottom: 3-D digital elevation model of Palm Beach, QLD, used as baseline to quantify volumes of sand (pre- and post-nourishment).
 
Our platforms of choice for small scale RGB photogrammetry are either DJI Inspire-series or P4P multirotor drones in combination with GCPs georeferenced with RTK GPS. In the near-future, T4D will use a Matrice 210 RTK multirotor drone, which will greatly improve our workflow.

Multispectral imaging

NDVI & soil contamination

Multispectral imagery of a QLD pineapple farm, with (top) NDVI vegetation index (rel. chlorophyll concentration, a proxy for plant health) and (bottom) 735 nm spectral band showing relative nitrogen concentration. The “burned” vegetation (brown patch of high [N]) suggests soil contamination by overfertilization through downhill leakage from a shed used to store fertilizer.

Farmer A is killing the crop of Farmer B (and Farmer B probably doesn’t know why his pineapples are doing so bad).
 
UAS used to collect multispec data: Sensefly EbeeAg fixed-wing drone with Airinov 4C sensor or P3P/P4P with Micasense Sequoia sensor.