BioCap and IMGeospatial have successfully bid for and completed a contract to explore the innovative use of technology and data to measure the biodiversity of grasslands.
BioCap and IMGeospatial secured funding from the EU funded UFO programme – Innovation boosted by small flying objects.
The funds were used to assess the feasibility of utilising satellite and drone data to measure Biodiversity in grasslands. The Project is worked with 4 landowners across six sites in West Berkshire to gather data on known sites of high biodiversity from surveys, drones and satellites.
The data was used to:
Assess the accuracy of the current mapped GIS data
Assess the feasibility of using ecological surveys, high resolution drone data coupled with satellite data to identify and recognise species rich grassland.
Assess the feasibility of scaling the identification of biodiverse grassland sites
The work will was completed during the summer of 2021. The final report was accepted by the UFO team in Dec 2021. We concluded that using IMG methodology and software it is possible to score biodiversity using drones and satellite imagery.