UAS imagery acquisition for McFaddin NWR and J.D. Murphree WMA acquired fall 2017

To document current marsh conditions, imagery was acquired at 350 feet using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for 6 separate study locations. Three Sites are healthy marsh and three sites are degraded marshes. For each study site, ground control markers were established and surveyed in using Real Time Kinematic (RTK) survey equipment. The imagery collected will be processed to produce a mosaics for each study site and analyzed to generate current land-water ratios. The land-water data will not only quantify how much marsh is being affected, but the data will also provide a spatial aspect as to where these degrading marsh fragmentations are occurring. The land-water data will be correlated with other data such as salinity, prescribed burns, flooding frequency and flooding duration data to better understand what events may be causing marsh deterioration.