Hi All,
We are launching the Fly4Fall campaign, a worldwide initiative to crowd-source science from the drone community over the next few weeks. Please pass on to others you know!
The goal of Fly4Fall is a biogeographic survey of autumn plants everywhere (forests, prairies, deserts and more) to measure plant phenology (botany-speak for how plants look during the growing season) and reveal what the community can accomplish. Volunteer drone pilots are asked to collect data points from the poles to the equator, in places where leaves have already dropped to where they are green all year.
- Fly4Fall is free and totally voluntary.
- Open to anyone with a DJI drone and an iOS device (we had to standardize process). See here for compatibility.
- Download the free Hangar 360 for DJI app on an iPhone/iPad (sorry Android users).
- Collect a panoramic at the default height in the app of 100 m (300ft) over vegetation located in safe areas to fly (i.e. not national parks or near airports).
- Do as many spots as you like. Totally fine if the leaves are already gone in your area.
- Load the photos from the drone to app and the Hangar cloud to process into the panoramic.
- Submit the pano link created by the app to the team to plot on a master map.
- Email or Twitter instructions can be found at www.Fly4Fall.com.
- Here is an example from the Kearney Ag Station in California that just was submitted.
Full detailed instructions can be found at here
This is a joint initiative that will run for the next few weeks with citizens, schools, universities, companies, and a growing number of partners...including you!
Questions can be directed to Drone Scholars at info@dronescholars.com.
Thanks everyone!
Greg Crutsinger
Comments
Early submissions to Fly4Fall campaign:
Thanks for the info!
Satellite imagery is too low resolution for scoring phenology and distinguishing different plant species. There are already a network of mounted cameras to tract plants called PhenoCam. This is the equivalent version but in the sky and much more mobile.
I like the idea of crowd sourcing data acquisition! What advantage does this method have over satellite images?