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Leadership                                                                                          

The grant applicant who would lead the governance and financial administration of this “Hi-Res Imaging and Restoration Partnership” is the Stewardship Network, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Leadership of the Technical Team is provided by Applied Ecological Services, Inc., of Brodhead, Wisconsin. Additional key members of the Technical Team include Limnotech, Inc., Ann Arbor, Habitat Solutions, Inc., Beach Park, IL, Airborne Data Systems, Inc., Redwood Falls, MN, and Environmental Consulting and Technology, Inc., Ann Arbor. 

Individuals leading the Hi-Res Imaging and Restoration Partnership include:

Lisa Brush, Executive Director, Stewardship Network, www.StewardshipNetwork.org;

Steve Apfelbaum, Principal Ecologist/Owner, Applied Ecological Services, www.appliedeco.com;

Steve Allen, Habitat Specialist, Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, www.nhbpi.com; and

Nate Fuller, Conservation & Stewardship Director, Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy, www.swmlc.org.

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Partnership Intention

The intention of the Hi-Res Imaging and Restoration Partnership is to pool many projects that could benefit from state-of-the-art imaging technology under one grant proposal to the various federal agencies who are participants in the Great Lakes Restoration Consortium.

Concept

A Technical Team of natural area ecologists, GIS specialists, remote sensing experts, and aviation professionals wishes to partner with various tribal groups, land trusts, and other landowners and land managers around the Great Lakes to:

1.  Create very high resolution aerial imaging required to develop restoration and management plans for natural areas, key native plant species (e.g. wild rice), and re-introduction programs for special status plants and animals, and,

2. Develop cost-effective restoration and management plans, templates and tools to allow land owners and land managers to manage invasive plants and other conditions on the land, in wetlands and coastal areas.

3. Implement, with the assistance of professional contractors, project partners and volunteers, the restoration and management plans developed by the technical team, including on-going annual monitoring of results.

Using specialized aircraft and camera technology, the Technical Team would conduct flights and photography missions to provide very high resolution, multispectral digital aerial imagery of project areas to participating tribal groups, land trusts and other land owners/managers.

Among other benefits, this military-grade multispectral imaging will

·         create very high resolution measurements of habitat conditions

·         track coverage of  invasive species in project areas

·         accurately identify drain tile fields useful for mapping required by hydrology restoration initiatives

·         track point- and non-point source contaminant entries in wetlands, streams and coastal areas.

Depending on the needs of individual partner objectives, this imaging can provide on-the ground resolutions as great as half an inch (sub-centimeter), if needed, and can cover larger areas at one foot resolution (on the ground pixel size). With such fine resolution, the imaging created will be a significant improvement to existing imaging technology – typically with resolution ranging from one to thirty meters – for providing restoration and management guidance, in particular for special status species and critical habitats.

The high-resolution imaging complements other available imaging by offering significantly greater precision in any measurements, as well as flexibility in the timing and conditions under which imagery is obtainable (satellites and high altitude airplane imagery are limited by cloud cover and many weather conditions such as haze, sun angle, time of day, etc.). Use of this technology allows for predictable, controllable timing of the flights to precisely pinpoint, for example, either native or invasive plant or animal phenologies. Most satellite imagery has a minimum 9-day return frequency, and depending on the weather, it may be a much longer period.  

Imaging is created by down-facing digital cameras mounted on a slow, low-altitude airplane that can fly under the cloud ceiling. Interpretation of the imagery will be conducted by Technical Team ecologists who will work with natural areas managers and partners to optimize the value of the imagery. Multiple imaging flights will be made at key times for tracking natural phenomena, such as peak times for strategic plants or animals targeted by project partners.

All imagery will be ortho-rectified (meaning that blurs or terrain distortion due to the curvature of the Earth will be removed so that images are more reliable for making direct measurements of acreages), and mosaic’ed (meaning that individual frames will be pieced together to give a complete image of the total area being photographed).  This post-processing will be conducted by the Technical Team in near real-time so that partnering tribal organizations, land trusts, etc., can conduct followup ground-truthing and on-the-ground measurements at the same time. Imaging and GIS support will be provided by Technical Team members who will conduct the analyses most helpful to partners and project needs. 

The Technical Team is committed to helping project partners maximize the benefits of this imagery for your specific objectives by:

• Documenting baseline conditions of key natural areas and using the same technology to monitor restoration and management performance as management activities continue.
• Identifying the presence and extent of invasive species such as Phragmites, buckthorn, reed canary grass, purple loosestrife, etc.  The Technical Team will also help by monitoring the management effectiveness against these invasives.
• Identifying the presence and extent of native plant communities, native plants (e.g. Wild Rice), rare and threatened plant species, etc.
• Developing baseline conditions of wetlands that support target species such as Eastern Massasauga rattlesnakes, Mitchell’s satyrs, or other threatened and endangered species. These conditions can be used as references to identify and evaluate other potential sites for protection, management and/or introduction.
• Comparing the conditions of known quality sites and degraded sites, including but not limited to Areas of Concern (AOC) to inform restoration and management planning.
• Using information from the high-resolution imagery to improve restoration and management plans of key natural areas and to set those improvements in motion.
• Taking critical steps as identified by the management plans - invasive species control, purchase of development rights, etc.
• Developing this approach as a template to replicate for use throughout the Great Lakes to address ecological priorities, both internal and external to identified AOCs.
• Monitoring existing populations of wild rice and/or finding new areas within a project area suitable for reintroduction.

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Invitation to Project Partners

Become a Partner! Click here to apply

By distribution of this document, the Technical Team wishes to invite all interested Great Lakes basin land owners and managers to join the Hi-Res Imaging and Restoration Partnership in this grant application. We anticipate partners to include land trusts and conservancies, public land owners and managers, private and public foundations, non-profit organizations dedicated to ecological priorities, tribal organizations and perhaps private landowners interested in placing conservation easements on ecologically improved properties. With multiple partners and multiple specific project objectives, benefits will accrue to:

• Partners interested in other threatened and endangered species in their project areas that may benefit from high-resolution habitat identification and condition analyses, and restoration and recovery plans.
• Restoration and management programs that could benefit from the identification of invasive species threats.
• Preserves or other conservation lands (private or public) where high resolution imaging could help understand the effectiveness of prior management and restoration work.
• Properties requiring conservation easement monitoring with cost-effective, high-resolution imaging to free up staff and dollars for restoration, management and maintenance of conservation lands.

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Become a Partner! Click here to apply

To join the Hi-Res Imaging and Restoration Partnership in this grant application, you need only provide the following information which will be incorporated into the grant application once federal agencies issue their Requests for Proposals. Deadline for submitting the following information is Friday, October 30, 2009.

1. A description of your organization and the project you would like to pursue, including a geographical location of your site(s) and a digital (or hard-copy) map, if either is available.
2. A paragraph description of past land management or restoration work and an estimate of potential capacity for conducting on-the-ground restoration and management on your site(s). (Note: by “capacity”, we mean if you have people available to help conduct the on-the-ground work such as restoration treatments, monitoring, etc., that is needed by your project(s). At this point, your capacity for on-the-ground work is simply estimated, not promised.)
3. One paragraph description of objectives your organization would like to achieve through this grant program in your specific project(s).
4. Contact information of key persons with your organization who would be the points of contact to the project team.

Contact

Please return the information requested above via our Application Form (Click here to Apply).

Deadline to respond is Friday, October 30, 2009. 

Questions? Call Lisa Brush at (734) 996-3190 or email us at staff@stewardshipnetwork.org

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Free Wecast

To learn more about the technology and advantages of the high-resolution multispectral digital aerial camera technology, listin in on a FREE webcast archive hosted by The Stewardship Network by clicking here!

Leading the webcast, “How Aerial Imagery Can Guide Natural Areas Management”, will be Steve Apfelbaum and Lisa Brush of The Stewardship Network. 

How do I view the webcast?  Click this link to view the webcast!  Webcast archive will remain FREE until October 30th.  After Oct 30th it will be $10 to view the archive to help cover the cost of running the free and live Monthly Webcasts.

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