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Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been used for over 100 years. Not including balloons, the first UAVs were tested in 1917 during the First World War. Recreational drones are a much more recent phenomenon. Miniaturization of radio controlled (RC) components in the 1960s led to a thriving hobbyist use of RC airplanes. Now, who has not heard the buzzing of a drone in a park or on a beach or even in your neighborhood? It did not take long for today’s quadcopter drones to be considered for use in natural resources research and management.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has an aeronautics program within the Division of Forestry. Program Section Chief Paul Christensen shared that the program has 11 fixed-wing and 13 drone aircraft which are used to map forest cover types, assess forest health including invasive species and oak wilt infestations, conduct wildlife surveys, assess storm damage and assess and fight wildland fire. The program employs nine full-time staff and many part-time staff in several locations around Wisconsin. The Department’s Law Enforcement Division and Applied Science Division also use drones; however, forestry uses them most often.
What makes drones so incredibly useful in natural resource management is the ability to gather information more safely and efficiently with them than traditional observation platforms. Use of infrared (IR) imaging gathers observations of temperature variance, especially useful for picking out hotspots in smoky wildland fires or counting warm-bodied ducks on the water. Students in the College of Natural Resources at UW–Stevens Point used drones for duck surveys in Dr. Ben Sedinger’s research.
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