Primary goals

• Remote-sensing identification of eligible planting areas and planning
  for plantation establishment activities.
• Topographic assessment of terrain steepness for cost/benefit analysis of potential plantation sites.
• Verify site preparation and maintenance activities are carried out according to established protocols and cover the entire gross plantable area.

Key outcomes

1. Use of drones for mapping existing land cover and topographic assessment has been very effective in assessing suitable new planting areas.
2. While drone orthophotos has been effective in verifying site preparation and maintenance activities the determination of the Net Planted Area (the area that was actually planted) remains very challenging as the small size of the seedlings, coupled with poor visibility due to existing vegetation makes seedlings identification very challenging even in high resolution drone orthophotos.

Progress

This project commenced in Sept 2022 and is ongoing.

Lead researchers

• Nick Kokkas
• Calum McRae

Project partners

• Project Tarsier
• Shell

Sustainable Development Goals

This project works towards these UN Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 13: Climate Action
• SDG 15: Life on Land