Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the dasometric analysis of bamboo plantations from the genus Guadua spp.

Abstract

Objective: bamboo is a forest resource that, due to its rapid growth, requires frequent evaluations (monitoring) to define the most appropriate management strategies; however this entails a high cost and a great investment of time. This study presents an analysis of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to generate information on the crown cover of Guadua spp. bamboo strains, and relates it to other of its dasometric parameters. Methodology: the areas of the bamboo strains were defined based on generated aerial images, where each strain was delimited by differentiating it from its environment, for which four types of thresholds were defined. Results: the relationship of the crown area with each dasometric parameter suggests that there is a positive trend, where in most cases there was an adequate significance (P< 0.05): height R2= 0.67 (P= 0.0222); diameter 1.3 m R2= 0.56 (P= 0.0367); culm diameter 0.3 m R2= 0.57 (P= 0.0313); and number of culms R2= 0.54 (P= 0.130). Conclusions: in this way, the results showed that with the UAV it was possible to determine the coverage area of ​​individual bamboo strains and that some of their dasometric parameters could be estimated based on their allometric relationship.