| Description |
This portion of the data release presents the raw aerial imagery collected during the unmanned aerial system (UAS) survey of the intertidal zone at West Whidbey Island, WA, on 2019-06-04. The imagery was acquired using a Department of Interior-owned 3DR Solo quadcopter fitted with a Ricoh GR II digital camera featuring a global shutter. Flights using both a nadir camera orientation and an oblique camera orientation were conducted. For the nadir flights (F04, F05, F06, F07, and F08), the camera was mounted using a fixed mount on the bottom of the UAS and oriented in an approximately nadir orientation. The UAS was flown on pre-programmed autonomous flight lines at an approximate altitude of 70 meters above ground level (AGL), resulting in a nominal ground-sample-distance (GSD) of 1.8 centimeters per pixel. The flight lines were oriented roughly shore-parallel and were spaced to provide approximately 70 percent overlap between images from adjacent lines. For the oblique orientation flights (F03, F09, F10, and F11), the camera was mounted using a fixed mount on the bottom of the UAS and oriented facing forward with a downward tilt. The UAS was flown manually in a sideways-facing orientation with the camera pointed toward the bluff. The camera was triggered at 1 Hz using a built-in intervalometer. After acquisition, the images were renamed to include flight number and acquisition time in the file name. The coordinates of the approximate image acquisition location were added ('geotagged') to the image metadata (EXIF) using the telemetry log from the UAS onboard single-frequency autonomous GPS. The image EXIF were also updated to include additional information related to the acquisition. Although the images were recorded in both JPG and camera raw (Adobe DNG) formats, only the JPG images are provided in this data release. The data release includes a total of 3,336 JPG images. Images from takeoff and landing sequences were not used for processing and have been omitted from the data release. The images from each flight are provided in a zip file named with the flight number. [More]
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