The first day of the FRAME-CMU workshop on "Automated Forest Restoration”, participants from the group of FRAME’s partnered universities, including Kasertsart University (KU), Thailand, Souphanouvong University (SU), Savannakhet University (SKU), Lao PDR, started the morning session by attending lectures on an overview of automated forest restoration and photogrammetry for monitoring forest restoration: basic theory and practice. Then, hands-on using the Litchi program for flight planning plan was done in the afternoon.
The second day, the participants had a field trip to Ban Mae Khi Forest restoration plot, which was planted in 2019, to fly drones for photogrammetry images data, practice flying the drones manually, and seeing spraying demonstration for future development of weed control bioherbicide. In the morning, the participants learned basic drone flying by learning components of platform, features of application control of the drones, and every participants experienced how to fly the drones with basical functions and directions. In the afternoon, all participants learned about field tutorial preflight checks and observed flying waypoint mission recorded by Phantom 4 professional drone commanded through litchi application. Next, they learned to use Phantom 4 Multispectral connected with Ground Station Professional app and D-RTK 2 ground-based station for recording images mission. The last activity of the day was learning how to spray using DJI Agras T10 agricultural drone.
The third day, the participants attended lecture and practiced on the topic of “Image processing” using a software for image procession including Agisoft Metashape for constructing 3D models & orthophotos, cloud comparison for measuring tree heights, crowns, and stems, and Pix4D for measuring tree heights comparing ground-up and drone-down and QGIS for map layout and manual tree crown delineation.
The fourth, the participants attended the workshop with a hybrid seminar on the topic of Automated Forest Restoration and Research Development. Speakers were students and researchers whose studies related to the topic.
