Image above: Monday’s WATERCHESTNUT crew as the big balloon landed after a 2.5 hour flight. Half of these people were tasked with harvesting the invasive water chestnut from Lake Warner, and the others tried to document the extent of the invasion using aerial photography.
Galen and I drove down to Amherst, MA on Sunday where six Public Lab organizers and staff members and lots of Pioneer Valley friends gathered to share skills and put them to use. On Monday, we joined a project organized by the UMass Department of Environmental Conservation and the Center for Public Policy and Administration and the US Fish and Wildlife Service that was testing aerial identification of the invasive aquatic water chestnut (Trapa natans) and pulling out the weeds (in that order).
The event was organized by Don Blair, a Public Lab organizer and ringleader of Pioneer Valley Open Science, and hosted by Jake Wheeler at his HackerFarm01007. It was a huge success in many, many ways. Thanks much to Don and Jake and Cynthia and Charlie and Nate for the impressive coordination and cooperation.
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Don (left) and Jake (center) complete the construction of the HackrBlimp. This flew various cameras over the next two days. It's construction deserves an instructable note here. I have some photos, anyone else?
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Galen tethering HackrBlimp (and a dragonfly?). The blimp held about 35 cubic feet of helium and had four attachment points. Dragonflies were very interested in perching on the line.
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Some of Sunday's crew as HackrBlimp ascends at HackerFarm. It would be good to see some of the other photos taken on Sunday.
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HackerFarm from HackrBlimp. This is one of 590 photos taken by a Canon S95 on a fixed rig during a 1.3 hour flight. The rig was walked down several times during the flight and the camera pointed in different directions (including vertically). So there is some map stitching and aerial panorama stitching to do.
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Cynthia is flying the rig here. Reviewing these photos Sunday night on a huge TV inside the 1797 structure, we noted how conspicuous the white plastic lawn chairs were. The next day, Charlie brought several to scatter in the lake prior to aerial photography so there would be better ground control points. The little tables make even better GCPs than the chairs.
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The cove of Lake Warner that was documented and then cleaned of water chestnut on Monday. The dark streaks are canoe trails through floating-leaved aquatic plants including rooted and free floating species (it is mostly water meal and algae that are not rooted). The goal is to use photos like this, and infrared versions which we also captured, to locate patches of water chestnut as part of the much needed yearly monitoring to prevent the plant from spreading. Can you identify water chestnut in this photo?
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A very low altitude photo of the balloon-flying canoe passing a large patch of water chestnut (left). A dual camera VIS/NIR rig was flown under a five foot diameter neoprene balloon with about 55 cubic feet of helium. Initial inspection of the photos suggests that water chestnut has both a color and texture that could be distinguished algorithmically from other plants. We were very pleased with the results of this reconnaissance mission.
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Great summary Chris! Enjoyed working with everyone over the last couple of days. Started working on some panoramas last night. Will post that and any mapknitter work soon. Appreciate the prompt research note!
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Great post -- shall we start sharing our photos? I handed mine over to Galen.
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