Award: OCE-1829890

This grant at University of Central Florida worked in collaboration with multiple universities and Smithsonian MarineGeo to provide drone mapping support of eelgrass sites and wasting disease across 23 degrees of latitude along the Pacific Coast of North America. Across the project years, drone mapping was completed at the following locations: Prince of Wales Island, Alaska (University of Alaska Fairbanks). Coos Bay and Yaquina Bay, Oregon (Oregon State University) San Juan Island, Washington (Cornell U/UW FHL) Bodega and Tomales Bays, California (University of California Davis/Bodega Marine Lab) San Diego Bay and Mission Bay, California (San Diego State University) Hakai, Canada The UCF team also supported training in advanced drone and GIS methods for multiple graduate and undergraduate students and a post-doctoral scholar at UCF; community partners at each of the collaborating U.S. study sites; and 4 K-12 educators and 4 high school students as part of a supplemental Research Experiences for Teachers grant. The UCF team supported the open sharing of their drone mapping protocols through a curated GitHub site; several conference, industry, and public presentations; online story maps; and multiple collaborative scientific papers in leading journals. The work is impactful for science and society given the recent development of Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or drones), which have revolutionized imaging approaches across multiple disciplines. Compared to traditional satellite and aerial imaging methods, UAV cameras can achieve high-resolution mapping (< 0.05 m) for visible light bands (RGB), which enables unprecedented fine-scale image analysis at the level of individual seagrass leaves over much larger areas than is possible with traditional sampling methods. Using programmed autonomous mapping, UAVs can conduct surveys during a short low tide window (about 1 hour) when the upper intertidal area of the bed is exposed, and with repeatable on-demand imaging capabilities at a lower cost and with reduced human effort. Last Modified: 01/13/2023 Submitted by: Timothy Hawthorne