Participatory Mapping with sUAS: An Example from the Southern Great Plains

Keywords: sUAS, participatory mapping, citizen science, Southern Great Plains
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 40

Abstract

Attempts to link the social sciences with remote Earth observations date back to at least the mid-1990s when the National Resource Council (NRC), at the behest of NASA, organized a workshop to bring social and remote sensing scientists together. From this workshop, a seminal volume, Pixel and People: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science (NRC 1998) was produced. The overarching goals of these early endeavors were to get social scientists to use remotely sensed data and to foster collaboration between remote sensing experts and social scientists. However, despite attempts to “socialize the pixel” and “pixelize the social,” the analysis and interpretation of remotely sensed data, even within a social context, has remained largely a top-down approach with limited input from affected stakeholders. Indeed, so-called participatory sensing has primarily involved ground-level observations to verify (i.e. ground truth) remote sensing data products and/or participatory mapping methods to compliment remotely sensed data products. The acquisition and processing of remote sensing products, though, have largely remained non-participatory. However, the recent surge in relatively low-cost, ready-to-fly small unoccupied aerial systems (sUAS), colloquially known as drones, may be changing this. In this study, we present some preliminary observations from a multi-year participatory research/citizen science study known as ARID (Agroecosystems Resilience in Times of Drought) in which we worked with farmers and ranchers in three drought-stricken counties in the Southern Great Plains to collect and process low-altitude aerial images from sUAS of participants’ lands in an attempt to foster resiliency in times of climate uncertainty.