Uncategorized – Drones For Earth

Reforesting Cessenon (South of France)

Written on February 24, 2022.

The association “Actions pour le climat et la planète à Cessenon” & Drones for Earth have joined forces!

It all started on a whale watching tour in Iceland (to learn more about this adventure have a look at Kiki the Monkey travel blog) and ended with planting trees in Cessenon-sur-Orb, France.

A Parrot Anafi helped to document the activities and create some more scenic shots. Anafi 1.8.2

While searching for Humpback whales in the Arctic Sea, a member of Drones for Earth, Aurélie, met Susan and Drew; an Australian-American couple that has had 1000 lives and will have so many more. These nature lovers are retired and live in a charming village, Cessenon-sur-Orb, in France.

Susan and friends have created a new association “Actions pour le climat et la planète à Cessenon”. Its mission is to plant trees, to create a small forest to help improve the biodiversity of the area, absorb carbon dioxide, create oxygen and serve the community as a quiet relaxing retreat from their busy lives.

Drones For Earth Weekend 2021 – Glacier Arolla

Written on September 10, 2021.

This year Drones For Earth was in the swiss valley Arolla for their annual members outing. Again we taught each other the useful and necessary skills for completing the challenging missions we do, plus test our equipment to it’s limits, while of course having a good time! 🙂

Here the processed output:

Back in Kuzikus, Namibia

Written on June 9, 2021.

Mapping again the entire 100km2 of Kuzikus and this time in only 4 days!

Still the goal here in this wildlife reserve is to find faster and better ways to do wildlife management.

Namibia – all about tracks

Written on October 11, 2020.

Yes, you are reading correctly. Namibia it was again! This time with a team made up of Drones For Earth, WildTrack, and all the team at Kuzikus Wildlife Reserve where we all met.

With great advancements in technology in the last two years the bar was set high: map-process-train AI – apply AI to detect tracks not only of different animal species, but also between different animals within the same species.

As a small side project, the entire 100sqkm of the reserve was mapped at 4cm resolution.

Drones For Earth Weekend 2020 – Glacier d’Orny

Written on October 8, 2020.

Every year the Drones For Earth team heads out to complete a project altogether. Besides reviewing all aspects of a drone mapping mission, from planning and preparing to capturing the data and processing, it’s also about having a great time together!

Save the Steinmoosli and Balmos bogs

Written on June 21, 2018.

This mission is a follow-up of the Eigenthal and Rothenthurm bogs mapping, previously conducted with Pro Natura. The goal is to collect data to perform hydrologic simulations, and plan better the future work to preserve the bogs.

Mapping coastal communities in São Tomé & Principe

Written on February 17, 2018.

Drones For Earth worked with the World Bank to map coastal communities in São Tomé & Principe.

Drones for sharks!

Written on February 10, 2016.

With already over 15 missions under our belt, we have mapped just about any landscape with our drones. But the one thing we haven’t done yet is to give marine conservation a hand. Mapping St-Joseph atoll in the Seychelles and acquiring high-resolution aerial images to identify shark and ray pups seemed like the perfect challenge to introduce our drones to the salty and wet air of marine conservation.

The Digital Bushmen: UAS for wildlife tracking in Namibia

Written on October 20, 2015.

What happens when you mix ancient Bushmen knowledge with the latest in drone technology? Our experiment of joining these two very opposite worlds presents a completely new way of counting wildlife.

Namibia 2.0: Nature conservation revisited

Written on June 15, 2015.

Exactly one year after our first mission to Namibia for the SAVMAP project, a team made up of Drones For Earth, EPFL’s LASIG lab and Kuzikus Wildlife Reserve came together again in the Southern African savanna from May 16 to 23, 2015 to apply last year’s findings and push the limits of civilian drone use for nature conservation applications one step further.

Protecting endangered animals like the Black Rhino and plants like the endemic and fascinating Welwitschia mirabilis, proposing new ways of managing land sustainably in semi-arid savannas and finding new approaches to counting wildlife were all important topics on our agenda this year.

The mission in numbers:

Project performed in: 2015
Total flights: 55
Flying days: 8 days
Total flight time: 26hrs
UAS platform: 3 senseFly eBees
Camera payloads: RGB, NIR, multispectral, thermal
Images acquired: 39,782