On August 26th, Nick Everard and Azmol Ali from UKCEH met with staff from the Chilterns National Landscape on the River Chess to explore the potential of a new drone equipped with cutting edge thermal sensors, providing new insights into the rare and ecologically valuable chalk stream environment.
The ability of the drone’s highly sensitive thermal camera to ‘see’ and track tiny variations in water temperature can help us understand where water is coming from and how it is moving through the catchment.
A particular challenge on the River Chess is to accurately quantify the rate of flow in small spring-fed channels that are very difficult to measure with established techniques.
Happily, the mixing of newly-emerged groundwater with water already in the stream that had been warmed by the sun created a strong thermal ‘signature’ that could be tracked by the drone with a high degree of accuracy, allowing measurements in places where it might otherwise have proved very difficult.
Since there is no need for people or equipment to enter the water, drone-based measurements can also enable faster, safer fieldwork – an important consideration when working around water that can be deep and fast flowing, especially during flood events.
Nick is now exploring the potential of extending some of these techniques into space, using a new generation of very high-resolution thermal-imaging satellites.
Watch this space as things heat up in the fast-moving world of river monitoring!