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GI_Forum 2021, Volume 9, Issue 112th International Symposium on Digital Earth
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at |
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DATUM, UNTERSCHRIFT / DATE, SIGNATURE
BANK AUSTRIA CREDITANSTALT, WIEN (IBAN AT04 1100 0006 2280 0100, BIC BKAUATWW), DEUTSCHE BANK MÜNCHEN (IBAN DE16 7007 0024 0238 8270 00, BIC DEUTDEDBMUC)
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GI_Forum 2021, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 5-12, 2021/06/29
12th International Symposium on Digital Earth
More than half of the U.S. dams are privately owned and experienced the overgrowth of trees. There is a need to improve dam inspection and maintenance in a timely manner. Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) have been increasingly utilized for near-surface landscape mapping and reconnaissance. This study tests an sUAS protocol of closed-canopy tree survey on earthen dams. A DJI Matrice 100 flight was launched on September 22, 2020. The orthoimage and 3D point cloud are extracted, and the canopy height model is built. Treetops and crowns are delineated using an integrated watershed segmentation and image segmentation procedure. The results include a tree survey inventory that contains the locations, tree heights and crowns of 284 trees growing on the downslope of the dam. Given the flight flexibility and fine 3D details acquired from inexpensive drones, sUAS has a high potential for assessing tree overgrowth toward remediation solutions of earthen dams.
Keywords: sUAS remote sensing, watershed segmentation, 3D tree inventory, earth observation