Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU

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The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research into the potential application and technical evaluation of commercial small UAS (sUAS) technology, and their associated sensors, for support of USGS earth science missions (i.e.: monitoring of wildlife, natural hazards, invasive species, climate change impacts, archeological sites, etc.). The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is responsible for protecting the natural resources and heritage contained on almost 20% of the land in the United States, which requires periodic monitoring of vast expanses of public lands in remote regions. Although DOI scientists can obtain high accuracy in situ data based on ground measurements and sample collections, the scale of public lands can often make this approach unrealistic. And while sensors aboard piloted aircraft can, and frequently do, provide large area coverage with high-resolution imagery, increasing costs and potential safety issues, related to accessing remote and often dangerous areas, can limit their availability. And although satellite imagery has also proven to be a vital resource for data collection missions, it has limitations related to resolution and orbital dependencies. To respond to these ongoing remote sensing data collection challenges, DOI and USGS must continually evaluate new technologies with an emphasis on finding safer, lower cost, and more flexible methods for data collection. One promising new technology for acquiring this crucial remotely sensed data is Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and the USGS National Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Project Office (NUPO) was created to research and evaluate UAS operational potential. As part of that effort a comprehensive UAS strategy has been developed that is tailored to the mission, funding, personnel, and infrastructure levels of the DOI and includes:

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