UAV in forest planning

In this video, PhD student Stefano Puliti visually present his work with the use of UAV for collection of forestry inventory data. By means of a small camera mounted underneath the UAV, overlapping images are collected over the area of interest. These images can then be used to produce three-dimensional data by means of image matching.

In Stefano’s project the thee-dimensional data is used to predict forest biophysical characteristics (e.g. timber volume, basal area, stem number, and mean height) for a small forest propriety. He concludes that the use of UAVs allows forest owners to have rapid, flexible, and customized inventories. The high quality data from these inventories can be used to support forest planning.