MERI

Balloon Imagery for Assessing Wetland Sites

 

The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission has been using aerial imagery collected from a digital camera tethered to a helium balloon since 2006 to monitor wetland communities within the Hackensack Meadowlands District. The captured images are mosaicked and used in various projects and studies within the Meadowlands such as monitoring the invasion of Phragmites australis, identifying invasive fronts and determining areas of natural resistance, studying plant community change on manmade marsh surfaces due to subsidence, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permitting for verification of established communities. This presentation will focus on how the imagery was collected from the wetland sites and how the data is used.