Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for dasometric estimations in bamboo (Guadua spp) plantations

Abstract

Bamboo is a forest resource that, due to its rapid growth, requires frequent evaluations (monitoring) to define the most appropriate management strategies; however this entails a high cost and a great investment of time. In this study, an analysis is made of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to generate information on the canopy cover of Guadua spp bamboo strains, and relate it to other of their dasometric parameters. The areas of the bamboo strains were defined based on generated aerial images, where each strain was delimited, differentiating them from their environment, for which 4 types of thresholds were defined. The relationship of the crown area with each dasometric parameter suggests that there is a positive trend, where in most cases there was an adequate significance (P <0.05): height R²= 0.67 (P= 0.0222); Diameter 1.3 m R²= 0.56 (P= 0.0367); diameter of culmo 0.3 m R²= 0.57 (P= 0.0313) and number of culms R²= 0.54 (P= 0.130). In this way, the results showed that with the UAV it was possible to determine the coverage area of ​​individual bamboo strains and that some of their dasometric parameters could be estimated based on their allometric relationship.