There’s a lot going on right now in our conservation areas in Peru – and we’ve taken a look at the whole thing from above.
Tom Andersch is responsible for land management at our organisation and is therefore also our expert when it comes to drones and aerial mapping of our land holdings. Tom has just returned from Peru, where he took new aerial photographs of our conservation areas. It has been three years since the last flights, and a lot has happened in the meantime.
Tom received significant support from Brock Ryder of Drones for Earth, an NGO that has been supporting our mission with specialist expertise since 2021. Together, the two of them tested two new Trinity Pro drones from our partner Quantum Systems.
In total, Tom and Brock flew over four locations during their stay, covering approximately 299,km2, and taking 56,939 images! In addition, an area of 93 km² was surveyed using a LIDAR camera. An impressive result, despite the initially poor weather and a number of technical challenges. We are using the resulting high-resolution images to show you, in a transparent and verifiable way, exactly which plot of land has been protected by each donation – down to the square metre.
In future, the two RS2+ receivers we have received from Emlid will also help us with this. One of these receivers has been set up as a GPS base station – this enables us to georeference the aerial images with extreme precision and thus determine our land boundaries to within a few centimetres. Local researchers will also benefit from the receivers in future when georeferencing their research plots. As always, you’ll find the relevant geocoordinates on your certificates and can view your ‘personal’ patch of woodland at any time on our online map.
We’d like to thank our partners very much for their invaluable support!
The drones are now being cleaned and checked to ensure they’re ready for their next mission – and that’s already just around the corner!
