Considerations and tradeoffs of UAS-based coastal wetland monitoring in the Southeastern United States

Abstract

Coastal wetlands of the Southeastern United States host a high abundance and diversity of critical species and provide essential ecosystem services. A rise in threats to these vulnerable habitats has led to an increased focus on research and monitoring in these areas, which is traditionally performed using manual measurements of vegetative characteristics. As these methods require substantial time and effort, they are often limited in scale and infeasible in areas of dense or impassable habitat. Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (UAS) provide an advantage over traditional ground-based methods by serving as a non-invasive alternative that expands the scale at which we can understand these ecosystems. While recent interest in UAS-based monitoring of coastal wetland habitats has grown, methods and parameters for UAS-based mapping lack standardization. This study addresses variability introduced by common UAS study techniques and forms recommendations for optimal survey designs in vegetated coastal habitats. Applying these parameters, we assess alignment of computed estimations with manually collected measurements by comparing UAS-SfM mapping products to ground-based data. This study demonstrates that, with careful consideration in study design and analysis, there exists great potential for UAS to provide accurate, large-scale estimates of common vegetative characteristics in coastal salt marshes.