Using Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) to Assess Oyster Reefs to Inform Management and Restoration

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In the southeastern U.S., intertidal oyster (Crassostrea virginica) reefs are primarily managed by state agencies in support of recreational and commercial fisheries, as well as for their ecosystem services. Oyster resource managers and NERR staff often rely on conventional on-the-ground monitoring approaches to inform management and restoration decisions, but these approaches have limitations in that they are time consuming and are of limited spatial scale. In response to users' needs for rapid, standardized and quantitative measures to assess reef condition – which directs management and restoration actions – this project evaluated uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) as a tool for measuring reef changes within five National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRs) from North Carolina to Florida. The imagery analysis workflows developed in partnership with oyster resource managers provide quantitative measures of reef structural and demographic metrics and, importantly, changes to those metrics in response to natural and anthropogenic factors.…