Hi Chippie – I expect there is a lot you can do with a simple point and shoot RGB camera although mapping algal blooms would be easier with NDVI. For oil spills you might want to check out the Public Lab web site (https://publiclab.org) for some of the kite mapping work they did a few years ago during the Gulf oil spill. A simple point and shoot camera was all they used. That site also has links to DIY NDVI cameras in case that’s of interest.

As far as shooting over water a polarizing filter is helpful as is flying with the sun angle in mind when you do flight planning. The time of day and camera orientation will affect where or if sun glint appears on the photo. You can read up on the geometry of sun glint but spending a day or two flying over water is a good way to learn.

Sedimentation and turbidity monitoring is a bit more difficult. I suggest taking field measurements when you are flying the drone so you can create correlations between metrics you calculate from the imagery and what you measure in the field. The remote sensing literature has information about mapping turbidity than could be tried using a UAV and simple cameras. Since you’re at Berkeley you might try to get in touch with Ved Chirayath at NASA Ames. He’s doing some really interesting work with fluid lensing to remove distortions inherent when imaging over water. It’s usually used to improve viability of underwater features but maybe it could also be used to normalize the water signature and improve turbidity measurements.

Ned

Hi CHippie - I am wondering how your thoughts are progressing on this topic? Please let us know an update.

Thanks

Michael