Drone aerial imagery of macroalgae growing in a small embayment at the western end of the Nuussuaq Peninsula in Northwest Greenland

Aerial images of a small embayment at the western tip of the Nuussuaq Peninsula (NW Greenland) were acquired on 10 August 2019 using a DJI Phantom 3 Standard quadcopter drone. The imagery was acquired during the Vaigat Iceberg-Microbial Oil Degradation and Archaeological Heritage Investiga- tion (VIMOA) research cruise. Overlapping images were acquired during two consecutive flights using the 'interval' setting with a period of 5 seconds in the DJI Go app. The drone was flown manually. This drone survey was carried out with two primary objectives in mind: 1) Identify and quantify the macroalgae growing on the coast; 2) Identify any archaeological and cultural heritage sites that may be present. Images were processed using Agisoft PhotoScan Pro (v1.4.4; Linux Ubuntu). Images were aligned using the script CARMA_PhotoScan_Align.py (see this script for settings). After image alignment, the bounding box was visually inspected and the sparse point cloud was thinned using thresholds for the reconstruction uncertainty, projection accuracy, and reprojection error (gradual selection).  The remaining tie points in the sparse cloud were then used to build the dense cloud. The settings used for this step can be found in the script CARMA_PhotoScan_GS_DC_v2.py. Next, the dense point cloud was used to generate a digital elevation model (DEM) and, subsequently, an orthomosaic. The Agisoft PhotoScan processing report is also included.