One
of our latest projects explores the effects of drought on native New Zealand vegetation.
With the support of Auckland Council, we did a quick reconnaissance flight over Wenderholm Regional Park to see if
there were any visual effects of the 2012-2013 drought on the native tree,Taraire (Beilschmiedia
tarairi). Using a Sony HDR-AS15 mounted in a Blade 350QX, we circumnavigated
the top of the hill and collected around 70 images in 15 minutes (see image
below).
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| Flight Path of the Sony HDR-AS15 in the Blade 350QX |
We
then processed some of these images in Pix4D and despite the limited overlap we came up
with a mosaic which clearly depicts the stressed Taraire trees (eg the ones
with no leaves in the image below). The blurred edges are a result of our very
small image set. We intend to fly again next week with our Swampfox, when we will gather a more comprehensive series of overlapping images.
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| rapid mosaic of a small subset of images |
