Webinar: Demonstration of high-resolution drone-enabled mapping of EFB and other invasive plants

Presentation Description: This presentation will describe how drone-enabled sensing of European frog-bit and other invasive aquatic plants can help with identifying the presence and extent of these non-native taxa in the Great Lakes region. This project is being led by the Great Lakes Commission, in collaboration with research scientists from the Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI), who have been working with drones since 2011 for a variety of applications. Based on field data collected in 2024 in Ohio, we will show how natural color and multispectral drone imaging, when combined with appropriate image analysis tools, can create useful, high accuracy maps of European frog-bit and other invasive aquatic plants of concern to the region. Results so far will be shown for two Ohio sites with European frog-bit, and the analysis methods based on ArcGIS will be described.