Aerial Imagery

The scope of this work encompasses USGS activities in the Kalamazoo River Area of Concern (AOC) to identify and characterize reference reaches that may be used to inform dam removal and other restoration projects to ensure that they meet stakeholders’ priorities for hydrologic connectivity, channel stability, and fish passage. This work ultimately focuses on creating a library of publicly...

The Trempealeau National Wildlife refuge (NWR) is a refuge for breeding and migratory birds. In order to better understand habitat availability and manipulate water levels, a baseline knowledge of bathymetry of the area is needed. Currently, there is no bathymetric surveys for this area specifically and there are very few shallow water surveys especially for highly vegetated wetlands. The U.S...

The USGS is adapting the Chinese Unified Method, a fishing harvest method that uses herding techniques and a variety of nets to drive fish and concentrate them into a concentrated area for capture, in the fight against invasive Asian carps. This “Modified Unified Method” incorporates adapted techniques and modern technology for efficient, mass removal of bigheaded carp in North American waters...

The National Park Service Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway is known for their conservation efforts of threatened and endangered native freshwater mussels. Understanding what constitutes mussel habitat is important for identifying suitable habitat for the conservation and restoration of freshwater mussels. Mussel habitat has not been well...

Understanding the distribution of threatened and endangered freshwater mussels is needed to conserve and restore populations. Sampling for native freshwater mussels typically involves taking quadrat samples in soft substrates and counting the number of mussels in a defined area. However, this methodology is unsuitable for detecting populations of the Spectaclecase mussel (Margaritifera monodonta...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element is implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC), in cooperation with the five Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin. Color infrared aerial photography was...

Most of the locks and dams on the Illinois River are scheduled for closure for repair during the summer of 2020. This project will use 4-band (natural color and color infrared) aerial imagery to document baseline aquatic vegetation and river conditions prior to the closures in the late summer of 2019, and once again in the later summer of 2021 after the locks are reopened.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) program, through its Long Term Resource Monitoring (UMRR-LTRM) element, will once again collect systemic imagery of the entire Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) in the summer of 2020. Development of the 2020 Land Cover/Land Use (LCU) database will provide a fourth systemic dataset to compare to the 1989, 2000...

The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (JELA) in southeastern Louisiana is being invaded by feral hogs (Sus scrofa) and in need a systemic survey to determine where and how many hogs exist within the park boundary. Feral hogs are able to reproduce and increase their range rapidly, they are highly destructive to streams, wetlands, native plants and farm fields, and can spread...

The Illinois River's Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms Preserves are collaborative floodplain restoration projects involving The Nature Conservancy (TNC), The US Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with restoration efforts guided by a team of over forty science advisers. Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms were historic wetlands prior to conversion to farmland. This project is...

The Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center and the USFWS Migratory Bird Surveys Branch continue to partner on remote sensing projects that document and describe our natural resources, including flight planning, image acquisition, and image processing support for both waterfowl and wildlife surveys and for vegetation mapping projects.

In collaboration with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Vision Group at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California - Berkeley, the U.S. Geological Survey Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center is developing deep learning algorithms and tools for the automatic detection, enumeration, classification, and annotation...