| Project Code: | HIFORP-01-004 |
| Program: | FRIP |
| Sponsor: | West Fraser Mils Ltd. -High Prairie |
Object & Deliverables
Forest Management Unit (FMU) S10 is a crown managed FMU which consists of approximately 408,251 hectares or ~43.8 full township equivalent (see Figure 1-1). West Fraser Mills Ltd. (West Fraser) holds a coniferous timber quota of 58.79% for C/CD/DC cover groups which has an annual allowable cut of 56,789 m3/yr. West Fraser received funding from the FRIAA – Forest Resource Improvement Program to acquire high resolution leaf-off aerial imagery to support the development of an Alberta Vegetation Inventory (AVI) 2.1.1 enhanced inventory in accordance to the specifications described in AAF/AESRD’s AVI 2.1.1 manual.
The acquired aerial imagery consists of leaf-off 30 cm RGBI digital 4 band imagery, 3D imagery and all GPS inertial measurement unit (imu) files for the 408,000 hectares in FMU S10. Acquiring leaf-off imagery is problematic due to the limited window which is available between snow free conditions and leaf flush. Good imagery can only be acquired when conditions are acceptable and planes with cameras are available. Due to ideal conditions that were presented in the spring of 2018 (low to no cloud cover and deciduous tress slow to bud) allowing for ideal leaf-off imagery capture, the opportunity was taken and imagery was acquired by GeodesyGroup on April 30, 2018. GreenLink Forestry Inc., (GreenLink) will be processing this imagery to use in the development of an enhanced AVI for S10.
West Fraser submitted the FRIAA proposal for S10 imagery on July 25, 2018 and it was approved on August 1, 2018. The acquired imagery was delivered to GreenLink on June 20, 2018.
Leaf-off imagery was successfully acquired for FMU S10 on April 30, 2018. Figure 2-1 illustrates the townships the acquired imagery covers. Imagery was captured digitally (4 band RGBI) at a 30 cm pixel resolution. The camera used by Vexel Ultracom large format digital camera which acquires 4 band RGB (I/N) imagery within a single frame. Flight lines, images numbers and aircraft information are summarized in Appendix I.
Geodesy group processes the imagery into readable raw tiff files along with the associated GPSIMU files required for spatial processing and delivered these to GreenLink on June 20, 2018. GreenLink processes these files using Datem Summit Evolution Pro into a 3D project linking the tiff imagery with the proper spatial information and created 3D imagery and orthophoto mosaics for each township. The processed images files were delivered to West Fraser on September 27, 2018. This completed the aerial imagery deliverables for the project.
Final Report
The complete findings of this project, methodology, observations and results are contained in the S10 Leaf-Off Aerial Imagery Capture Final Project Report.
HIFORP-01-004