Intern Uses Drone Images to Map Coastal Permafrost and Erosion

A research project is using aerial images to study the characteristics of permafrost and coastal erosion processes relevant to energy and power applications on the state’s north slope coast.

Logan Borger, a sophomore studying mechanical engineering at UAF is part of a project team using photogrammetric imagery processing techniques to study aerial photographs collected as part of Task 6 of the "Secure and Resilient Power Generation in Cold Regions Project." This project is funded by the U.S. Department of the Army, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center.

“This week I am working on a new site, Foggy Island Bay,” says Borger.
Borger, working with researcher Erin Trochim, will be taking images captured from an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and creating digital surface models for this area.

“There was quite a bit of troubleshooting with the virtual machine that we were using to run Agisoft Metashape software, but we had a lot of help getting it figured out.”

 

Logan Borger is a summer intern at ACEP. Photo courtesy of Logan Borger.