I worked on this project under the cooperation of the Morro Bay National Estuary Program and the California State Parks with the goal of quantifying the ratio of native to invasive vegetation along the large sandspit that forms Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo, California. The actual imagery was able to be captured in one day, despite the sandspit spanning over 9 miles. With the assistance of the park personnel, I was able to get an ATV ride alongside the drone as I piloted it.
An interesting element of this project was that the dunes on this sandspit are habitat for snowy plovers, an endangered species that suffers from humans’ large-scale reduction of dunes and disturbance by passerby on beach-front areas across much of the coastline. While this did not cause any issues in our data collection, it did necessitate we adapted our strategy so that the drone was high enough from their nests to avoid conflict. Without the use of drones, this data collection would have taken a much longer time, being conducted by hand by a handful of park rangers. The resulting imagery has allowed for ongoing assessment of invasive ice plant on the dunes and will allow for better-informed strategies to reduce this plant’s reach whilst maintaining the conservation of other species integral to dune health.
