A Game of Drones: Advancing Discovery and Innovation in Coastal Research

Coastal habitats are some of the most heavily monitored ecosystems in the world owing to their economic and ecological. Traditional monitoring methods, such as quadrats and meter tapes, have provided valuable data on trends and status on coastal resources. However, these approaches come with limitations centered about the spatial and temporal scales across which they can be used. With ongoing climatic shifts, new approaches are needed to monitor how a changing climate is affecting coastal habitats across multiple temporal and spatial scales. In this talk I discuss the development of an autonomous aerial drone program created as part of NOAA's Center for Coastal and Marine Ecosystems (CCME) to support next generation monitoring approaches for studying coastal ecosystems. Aerial drones have seen increased use in coastal studies due to their ability to rapidly capture multi-scale data on the distribution and abundance of coastal resources at a relatively low cost. Modern drones, outfitted with high-resolution digital cameras, provide a method for capturing multi-scale data on coastal habitat distribution and community composition at scales of a few centimeters up to hundreds of meters. Beyond their capacity to capture high resolution image data, drones come with many other advantages that provide scientists with new ways to study the factors that structure coastal habitats across multiple spatial and temporal scales. These include but are not limited to (1) carrying various imaging (e.g., hyperspectral cameras) payloads to collect spatial datasets; (2) increased frequency in survey intervals; (3) low altitude, autonomous flight that allows sensors to collect fine spatial resolution data; and (4) low operating costs. Drone data can provide stakeholders, resource managers and researchers with timely information on changes across a myriad of critical coastal habitats. As the NOAA CCME has a direct student training mission, our drone program not only support next generation coastal research but, the training a new generation of scientists in the use of technologies to support the emerging needs of 21st century coastal science.