Natural Resources Wales - HABITAT CONSERVATION
What’s the best way to survey environmental changes in remote areas?
Many of the most picturesque and precious natural environments in Wales are vast in size, hard to reach and therefore incredibly difficult to survey. To enable accurate evidence about environmental changes and conservation projects to be collected cost-effectively and quickly at remote locations, Natural Resources Wales uses ArcGIS and drones.
Natural Resources Wales is responsible for ensuring that the environment and natural resources of Wales are maintained, protected and used in a sustainable way. One of the organisation’s key roles is to gather and share evidence about the environment, which can then be used to inform vitally important decisions about conservation projects, land management and government policy. Capturing this evidence is, however, not always easy. Some mountainous and coastal areas of Wales are very hard to reach, while others are so vast that they are too big to survey on the ground using traditional methods.
To overcome these challenges, Natural Resources Wales uses drones and Esri’s ArcGIS Drone2Map solution to gather reliable evidence to inform environmental decisions. Drone2Map is playing a key role in Wales’ first national peatland action programme, where it is being used to gather data about upland peat bogs that are hard to reach on foot. New evidence about erosion and drainage is being amassed that will help to inform sustainable management and restoration plans for blanket and lowland peats.
Natural Resources Wales gains significant benefits from being able to capture drone footage of the same site at regular intervals and then analyse the data to detect and better understand changes in the environment over time. At Pontarddulais near Swansea, for example, the organisation has used Drone2Map to help it monitor the installation of new habitats, including a wetlands area, over 3000 trees and shrubs, a pond and improved grassland near a new flood storage reservoir. The organisation will continue to use Drone2Map at this site to survey the ongoing development of the new natural environment and measure the success of the scheme in improving biodiversity.
“Drone2Map enables us to gain high quality evidence about a wide range of different environments, very quickly, which leads to better management of natural resources.”
Adam Burke, Lead Specialist Advisor, Geospatial, Natural Resources Wales
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