Adept Turnkey is pleased to have supported the ForestTech forestry conferences in Melbourne and Rotorua NZ earlier in November, by attending and exhibiting a range of hyperspectral imaging products suited to that industry.

Hyperspectral imaging is being used for a variety of purposes including the identification of species, stress due to disease or soil conditions, seedling survival rates, bush fire analysis, environmental maintenance and a number of other applications.

Adept Turnkey's Managing Director Marc Fimeri said: "Hyperspectral cameras have a lot to offer many industries and none more so than agriculture and forestry. They provide data that cannot be seen with the human eye and open a window into the chemical composition at the image pixel level. It's fast, accurate and non-destructive."

Adept Turnkey was one of a dozen exhibitors, the two conferences attracted a good crowd with over 500 attendees this year. The conferences are aimed primarily at the techniques and tools used by authorities and forest management companies to manage natural and plantation forests. "We primarily exhibited and demonstrated our airborne hyperspectral imaging products" Marc Fimeri said. "They were well received and we envisage the technology’s adoption to continue increasing significantly in coming years".

On show at the conference were Adept Turnkey’s Specim range of hyperspectral cameras and systems, designed for UAV’s and for manned aircraft.

Unique studies have been done with Adept’s Specim Fenix 400-2500nm system on manned aircraft, and its unique properties have given forestry analysts a never-seen-before insight into the distribution of dieback in eucalypts and conifers.

The FX10 and FX17 offer VNIR (400-1000nm) and NIR (900-1700nm) bandwidths and are deployed on UAV’s for rapid, small area surveying.

This technique has seen a surge in adoption rates and is now becoming common-place in many industries including Forestry, not only for hyperspectral but also for Lidar 3D mapping. "We sometimes see operators flying hyperspectral with Lidar" Mr Fimeri said. "They complement each other and together provide more accurate and far more detailed data."

Providing accessiblily in difficult terrain
A particularly interesting presentation at the conference in Rotorua was that of Professor Ian Yule from Massey University who spoke about the use of hyperspectral airborne technology for Precision Farming.

Professor Yule presented some of the work the University has done in flying the Fenix hyperspectral camera over remote and difficult terrain and hill farming country in New Zealand.

Providing precision farming while saving costs and resources
The Massey team was able to detect species of grasses growing and through their spectral signatures, to infer the quality of soil by indirectly measuring nitrogen, potassium and phosphates. This data allows a grazier to tailor and deliver fertiliser that is mixed to the exact needs of the soil with manned aircraft in locations otherwise difficult to access, and so significantly increasing productivity and decreasing costs. Professor Yule gave an example of a farmer who saved $150,000 in a single year.

 

 

For more information on this article or any of Adept Turnkey’s hyperspectral products, please contact Marc Fimeri at mfimeri@adeptturnkey.com.au