River Teme aerial surveys

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Client: Environment Agency / Severn Rivers Trust

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BUG was commissioned by the Environment Agency and Severn Rivers Trust to conduct an aerial survey of the River Teme upstream of Powick Weir, to provide baseline imagery and characterise river habitat in advance of removal of the weir as part of the Unlocking the Severn project, aimed at removing barriers to fish migration in the Severn catchment.

Surveys were conducted using a Small Unmanned Aircraft System (SUAS), or drone, to collect high resolution imagery from an altitude of 50 m, providing a ground resolution of 2.1 cm/pixel. A total of approximately 4 km of river length was mapped from Powick Weir downstream to Bransford Bridge upstream.

The collected images were stitched together into a high resolution geo-referenced orthomosaic, which was then imported into GIS software to calculate the extent of different river habitat types.

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Using drones for rapid collection of high resolution geo-referenced imagery is proving to be a very efficient and cost-effective way of assessing and managing natural habitats.

4 km river length | 2 days | 8 drone flights | 5,000 images captured