Monitoring Restoration on Sugarloaf Island Using Aerial Imagery Captured by Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Due to growing concern over Sugarloaf Island?s continued erosional issues, plans are being made to increase the resiliency of Morehead City?s downtown waterfront by enhancing Sugarloaf Island?s capacity to mitigate disturbances such as hurricanes. The Sugarloaf Island project design employs a hybrid approach that combines nature-based solutions and engineered structures to enhance the Island?s resiliency. This hybrid approach comprises several living shoreline restoration approaches, including offshore hollow Wave Attenuation Devices (WADs), vegetation planting, and oyster reef installation. Short- and long-term monitoring of Sugarloaf Island is another critical project component since there is a distinctive need to understand the efficacy of living shorelines and other restoration devices at different spatial and temporal scales to improve coastal resiliency. Here, we will use small Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (sUAS) for high-resolution, real-time monitoring of Sugarloaf Island pre- and post-restoration. Rigorous field and data processing and analysis workflows will be designed around a combination of sUAS to capture aerial imagery and structure-from-motion photogrammetry to create orthomosaics and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), which will serve as the product deliverables. This work will help to enhance pre-restoration data availability. It supports knowledge-based decision-making regarding habitat change, erosional issues, and the efficacy of nature-based solutions to increase the resiliency of a coastal community in North Carolina.

date/time interval

  • December 2023 - March 2024