Assessment Inventory and Monitoring and Unmanned Aerial Systems
Assessment Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) methods are used to monitor landscape condition and trends across many BLM-managed lands. However, the derived fractional cover estimates, which are used to equate field-based AIM measurements with broad-resolution remotely sensed imagery (e.g. Landsat), only tell a fraction of the ecological story. To supplement and extend information extracted with AIM methods, BLM crews are flying Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) missions to collect very high resolution imagery capable of discriminating individual plants identified during field data collection.