Journal
CORAL REEFS
Volume 36, Issue 1, Pages 269-275Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00338-016-1522-0
Keywords
Drone mapping; Coral reefs; Bathymetry from drones; Structure from motion underwater; Bathymetry from photogrammetry
Categories
Funding
- Institutional Strategy of the University of Bremen
- German Excellence Initiative [ABPZuK-03/2014]
- ZMT, the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology, Bremen
- US National Science Foundation [OCE1435133, OCE1236905, OCE1637396]
- Division Of Ocean Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1435133] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We propose a novel technique to measure the small-scale three-dimensional features of a shallow-water coral reef using a small drone equipped with a consumer-grade camera, a handheld GPS and structure from motion (SfM) algorithms. We used a GoPro HERO4 with a modified lens mounted on a DJI Phantom 2 drone (maximum total take-off weight < 2 kg) to perform a 10 min flight and collect 306 aerial images with an overlap equal or greater than 90%. We mapped an area of 8380 m(2), obtaining as output an ortho-rectified aerial photomosaic and a bathymetric digital elevation model (DEM) with a resolution of 0.78 and 1.56 cm pixel(-1), respectively. Through comparison with airborne LiDAR data for the same area, we verified that the location of the ortho-rectified aerial photomosaic is accurate within similar to 1.4 m. The bathymetric difference between our DEM and the LiDAR dataset is -0.016 +/- 0.45 m (1 sigma). Our results show that it is possible, in conditions of calm waters, low winds and minimal sun glint, to deploy consumer-grade drones as a relatively low-cost and rapid survey technique to produce multispectral and bathymetric data on shallow-water coral reefs. We discuss the utility of such data to monitor temporal changes in topographic complexity of reefs and associated biological processes.
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