Drone use has been "powerful ally" in environmental conservation, highlights António Ventura - Communication

Secretaria Regional da Agricultura e Alimentação

The Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Food, António Ventura, highlighted today that the use of drones has been a "powerful ally in environmental conservation, forest planting and a powerful tool in the conservation of natural resources."

"Drones can fly over large areas of forest and produce high-resolution aerial images," he pointed out. The Regional Directorate for Forest Resources and Spatial Planning (DRRFOT) has acquired a drone with a LIDAR sensor, which has assisted in the automatic estimation of tree counts, the measurement of heights and better definition of logging routes.

"In 2022, the assessment of the calculation of the carbon retention of Azorean forests began, which is expected to be completed in 2027. It is important to emphasise that forests are the terrestrial ecosystems with the greatest capacity for storing carbon," said António Ventura.

One of the biggest constraints concerning the use of cartography is the rapid outdating of basic elements (aerial photography, orthophoto images, etc.), given the dynamics of changes in land use.

Producing such maps using traditional methods, through the acquisition of new aerophotographic coverage, proves to be extremely costly in the Region, as it is necessary to move resources (aircraft, crews), which, given the weather conditions, may be unable to produce results for several weeks. 

Furthermore, the production of maps in areas with difficult access and adverse topographical conditions is much more efficient with this equipment than with conventional GPS surveys.

This innovation will continue to be a decision-support tool in various areas of the DRRFOT's activity, namely in the management of cuts in the forest perimeter, licensing processes for felling private forests, afforestation projects, forest inventory, and management of the forest and rural road network. It is also intended for the preparation and monitoring of Forest Management Plans, in addition to the daily activity of the Forestry Services.

The need for new remote sensing technologies to produce, for example, digital terrain models for drawing up flood risk maps, biomass availability maps or other maps will only be possible with the use of LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors, a laser scanning system used globally in geodesy, archaeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry engineering, coastal oceanography, remote sensing and atmospheric physics.