Unmanned Aerial Systems for Monitoring Soil, Vegetation, and Riverine Environments provides an overview of how unmanned aerial systems have revolutionized our capability to monitor river systems, soil characteristics, and related processes at unparalleled spatio-temporal resolutions. This capability has enabled enhancements in our capacity to describe water cycle and hydrological processes. The book includes guidelines, technical advice, and practical experience to support practitioners and scientists in increasing the efficiency of monitoring with the help of UAS. The book contains field survey datasets to use as practical exercises, allowing proposed techniques and methods to be applied to real world case studies. Includes a summary of technical UAS issues allowing readers to focus on how the exact technology fits their scientific question Provides specific applications enabling readers to understand the benefits and threats within the field Includes a comprehensive literature review in each chapter, allowing readers to know the key players and research in the field

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are a rapidly evolving technology with an expanding array of diverse applications. In response to the continuing evolution of this technology, this book discusses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and similar systems, platforms and sensors, as well as exploring some of their environmental applications. It explains how they can be used for mapping, monitoring, and modeling a wide variety of different environmental aspects, and at the same time addresses some of the current constraints placed on realizing the potential use of the technology such as s flight duration and distance, safety, and the invasion of privacy etc. Features of the book: Provides necessary theoretical foundations for pertinent subject matter areas Introduces the role and value of UAVs for geographical data acquisition, and the ways to acquire and process the data Provides a synthesis of ongoing research and a focus on the use of technology for small-scale image and spatial data acquisition in an environmental context Written by experts of the technology who bring together UAS tools and resources for the environmental specialist Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing: UAS for Environmental Applications is an excellent resource for any practitioner utilizing remote sensing and other geospatial technologies for environmental applications, such as conservation, research, and planning. Students and academics in information science, environment and natural resources, geosciences, and geography, will likewise find this comprehensive book a useful and informative resource.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "UAV Sensors for Environmental Monitoring" that was published in Sensors

This volume presents the conference proceedings from FinDrones 2023. The book highlights recent drone technology developments by experts and academicians for applications in agriculture, forestry, and other industries. This iteration of FinDrones presents research using autonomous drones in various fields from environmental monitoring to farm robotics and from photogrammetry to search and rescue missions. Emphasis is placed on contextualizing the conference presentations and content to Finland and the unique challenges typical to the region. The work will interest academicians, entrepreneurs, and professionals involved in remote sensing applications of unmanned aerial vehicles and enthusiasts of drone technological developments.

The advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms and onboard sensors in the past few years have greatly increased our ability to monitor and map crops. The ability to register images at ultrahigh spatial resolution at any moment has made remote sensing techniques increasingly useful in crop management. These technologies have revolutionized the way in which remote sensing is applied in precision agriculture, allowing for decision-making in a matter of days instead of weeks. However, it is still necessary to continue research to improve and maximize the potential of UAV remote sensing in agriculture. This Special Issue of Remote Sensing includes different applications of UAV remote sensing for crop management, covering RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor applications aboard UAVs. The papers reveal innovative techniques involving image analysis and cloud points. However, it should be emphasized that this Special Issue is a small sample of UAV applications in agriculture and that there is much more to investigate.

This book showcases how new and emerging technologies like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are trying to provide solutions to unresolved socio-economic and environmental problems. Unmanned vehicles can be classified into five different types according to their operation. These five types are unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles (operating on the surface of the water), unmanned underwater vehicles, and unmanned spacecraft. Unmanned vehicles can be guided remotely or function as autonomous vehicles. The technology has a wide range of uses including agriculture, industry, transport, communication, surveillance and environment applications. UAVs are widely used in precision agriculture; from monitoring the crops to crop damage assessment. This book explains the different methods in which they are used, providing step-by-step image processing and sample data. It also discusses how smart UAVs will provide unique opportunities for manufacturers to utilise new technological trends to overcome the current challenges of UAV applications. The book will be of great interest to researchers engaged in forest carbon measurement, road patrolling, plantation monitoring, crop yield estimation, crop damage assessment, terrain modelling, fertilizer control, and pest control.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have already become an affordable and cost-efficient tool to quickly map a targeted area for many emerging applications in the arena of ecological monitoring and biodiversity conservation. Managers, owners, companies, and scientists are using professional drones equipped with high-resolution visible, multispectral, or thermal cameras to assess the state of ecosystems, the effect of disturbances, or the dynamics and changes within biological communities inter alia. We are now at a tipping point on the use of drones for these type of applications over natural areas. UAV missions are increasing but most of them are testing applicability. It is time now to move to frequent revisiting missions, aiding in the retrieval of important biophysical parameters in ecosystems or mapping species distributions. This Special Issue shows UAV applications contributing to a better understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem status, threats, changes, and trends. It documents the enhancement of knowledge in ecological integrity parameters mapping, long-term ecological monitoring based on drones, mapping of alien species spread and distribution, upscaling ecological variables from drone to satellite images: methods and approaches, rapid risk and disturbance assessment using drones, mapping albedo with UAVs, wildlife tracking, bird colony and chimpanzee nest mapping, habitat mapping and monitoring, and a review on drones for conservation in protected areas.