ESTABLISHING STREAM DISCHARGE LOCATIONS USING SUAS BASED THERMAL IMAGERY

Small unmanned areal systems (sUAS) have recently become more prevalent in environmental remote sensing. With the advent of small inexpensive recording thermal imagers, a wide variety of local scale investigations becomes possible. Spatial resolution from sub-meter down to a few centemeters is achievable based on flight elevations. In this study, a FLIR Vue thermal imaging camera attached to a quadcopter sUAS system is used to map thermal variations in a small urban creek, in order to identify potential discharge areas into the creek from both mapped and unmapped discharge pipes and groundwater discharge. This information is of potential use in identifying sampling areas for contaminannts in outflows.