A picture paints a thousand words

Imagine what drones can do for your audit reports.

We launched the first test flight of a quad-copter drone on 23 – 24 December 2014 in the forests of a timber concession. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mapped a section of river corridor and captured aerial photographs of road networks and the log yard.

Cheap, Efficient, Accurate
Quad-copters are inexpensive and are perfect for use in forest environments, as they are portable and able to launch vertically through gaps in the forest canopy.

A Standardised Approach
This pilot was part of a larger project funded by The World Resources Institute to develop a standardized methodology for using drones in land use monitoring, termed Systemised Operational Land Use Aerial Reconnaissance (SOLAR). 

Agricultural Applications
SOLAR also covers the use of fixed wing drones which can fly longer and further in agricultural environments to monitor land-use. This part of the project was developed with support from Cargill and can be applied to all plantation types.

This image is a composite of over 50 images taken over an area of 3 square kilometres from an altitude of 120m and has a 10cm per pixel resolution.