sUAS Monitoring of Coastal Environments: A Review of Best Practices from Field to Lab

Abstract

Coastal environments are some of the most dynamic environments in the world. As they are constantly changing, so are the technologies and techniques we use to map and monitor them. The rapid advancement of sUAS-based remote sensing calls for rigorous field and processing workflows so that more reliable and consistent sUAS projects of coastal environments are carried out. Here, we synthesize the best practices to create sUAS photo-based surveying and processing workflows that can be used and modified by coastal scientists, depending on their project objective. While we aim to simplify the complexity of these workflows, we note that the nature of this work is a craft that carefully combines art, science, and technology. sUAS LiDAR is the next advancement in mapping and monitoring coastal environments. Therefore, future work should consider synthesizing best practices to develop rigorous field and data processing workflows used for sUAS LiDAR-based projects of coastal environments.