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Mapping River Dog Mouth, Mobile Alabama

Yesterday we went aerial mapping a landscape that is just about to change radically : restoration of the oyster reef in Mobile Alabama, Dog river mouth - known as Helen Wood Park beach. In two hours from now (2011 January 22 6AM), hundreds of volunteers will come to install a massive oyster reef here. From 8AM today "Volunteers will be deploying approximately 23,000 bags of oyster shells to create new reefs and habitat at the mouth of Dog River" - see them in action here .

Aerial mapping Prof. Dawn McKinney & Prof. Leo Denton of the University of Mobile South Alabama. Thanks to Shannon Dosemagen for organizing the trip.

These are the different reefs and bags of oyster they are installing. 5 non-profit organizations are working together to accomplish this massive landscaping project.

We took about 5000 aerial pictures that I turned into 3 very large resolution maps to make one huge map (at the top of the post):

Download these full resolution maps to your computer as .zip file (27mb). If you want to learn how to make one of these map, check this post.

This time, in addition of aerial photography, I also took ground samples (~250x microscopy), sand, sediment, organic material taken at regular interval. The idea is : if we are able to say what is on the ground - sometimes we may find oil spilled still - we can qualify and quantify what we see on the aerial pictures. We will come back in a few weeks to map again and see the effects of installing an artificial oyster reef here : "before and after" :)

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date : 20110121@15:41, low-tide.
Location : 30.57562, -88.07847
Mapping for Grassroots Mapping & LA Bucket Brigade.
Photos : Prof. Leo Denton and Prof. Dawn McKinney
Stitching : Cesar Harada
Left at 10:45 - return 20:30
Milleage : start 761963 - end 764803

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Re-Posted on the Grassroots Mapping blog page : http://grassrootsmapping.org/2011/01/mapping-river-dog-mouth-mobile-alabama/

Filed under // Aerial Alabama Grassrootsmapping Helium LA Bucket Brigade LABB Mapping Mobile Nature Oyster Reef Reserve Restoration River

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Grassroots mapping camera mount ***

to fly tethered to this kite / balloon !

As promised, here is a step by step instructable to build a great Grassroots mapping camera mount *** for a helium balloon or a kite. This particular model is made from one big bottle of soda, all plastic, provides better protection against hard landing, moderate rain, better image stabilization with longer wings for drag, less plastic lost in the fabrication, easier and safer adjust with the screw tap :)

A quick reminder for the newcomers : a group of DIY warriors, called Grassrootsmapping.org put together techniques of aerial photography to study the effect of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seen from 500ft above. The aerial survey are often conducted by the folks of LA Bucket Brigade, the independent NGO that created the crowd-sourced oil spill map (report!) and since 10 years defends Louisiana victims of air pollution, BIG UP LABB! So, the idea is to fly helium balloons or kites 500ft high with camera mounted on them, taking pictures every 5 or 10 seconds. We stitch the pictures to make high definition maps (below) for scientific study or against BP at the court of Justice. Yes, not only beautiful, very useful.

To make this big cool map on your computer (see detailled post about image stitching) you will need a helium balloon or a kite capable of lifting your camera in its mount. To fabricate the mount you will need the following tools :

Start by drilling the bottom of the bottle with a large drill bit, here ø 1 cm. Carefully.

Cut the bottle above the casting line :

Insert the bottom of the bottle you just cut in the bottle itself until the head :

Cut a large stripe of the bottle, leaving enough on the bottle head side to host a camera :

Cut the large stripe :

Cut the large stripe in the length :

Now you have 2 narrow stripes :

Fold them in 2 in the length :

Both of them :

Cut the end of each of the narrow stripes in a "pig feet" :

If you have a welder, you can make the "pig feet" more durable by "welding" the end of the cut

Put "feet to feet" the folded stripes :

Duct tape one side of the "feet nails" :

Mark where you want to insert the feets :

With a blade - ideally with the soldering iron, make a cut the width of the stripe :

Insert the "wings" :)

tape the wings in :

Almost there, nice! Taking shape!

Pass the long thin rope through the nozzle :

Make 2 loops (4 threads) with the thread :

Adjust the tension of the 2 loops :

A simple knot with the 4 threads in :

FIx the threads with string tape to camera (real strong, if you use bad tape your camera may fall from 500ft in the water / in the sand / on the rocks :_(

Pull the rope back in the body :

Pull stronger till the camera doesn't move much anymore:

Screw the cap in, with the threads forced (and probably twisted while you screw in):

The screw cap with hold the 4 threads securely, it easier to adjust, and also be easy to remove :

Test the balance of your devicem ideally with a fan, your camera mount should swing gently in the wind and follow the wind like a weather vane :)

To avoid having of the mount with the pictures you take, you can crop the extra plastic :

If you want to avoid turbulence and aggravate wind drag you can make fringes at the end of each wings :

you are ready to fly !

Get out of here, inflate a balloon:

or a kite :

Attach your camera mount to the kite, and walk on the beach / or sail !

For the image stitching post : http://cesarharada.posterous.com/bay-jimmy-post-oil-spill-observation

Happy mapping !

Filed under // Aerial Balloon Bottle Camera Design Grassrootsmapping Kite LA Bucket Brigade LABB Louisiana NOLA New Orleans Observation Open-source Open_Sailing Photography Protei Soda technology

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Grassroots mapping

A couple of days ago, we went with the folks of LA Bucket Brigade (again!) to do some grassroots mapping (aerial photography actually) in the Bay Jimmy & Wilkinson Bayou (29.45193, -89.89812), and it was superb ~ and dystopic :/

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Seen from up there is so different from what you see from the water :

We went in those super cool (noisy though) boats :

Boat seen from the balloon (!!!) :

This is how it works :

So we do the same but with a helium Balloon flying at ~1000ft, with a camera attached to it, looking down, taking a picture automatically every 5 seconds or so :

I took a chance to try to enhance the "photography cabin" with Sue Stoessel, Bennie Gregory and Hunter Daniel (in a previous mapping trip though):

You see, it is just a bottle of soda and some duct tape, you can DIY it!

Now you may wonder why we take these pictures :

- for science study and evaluation of the impact of the oil spill on the coast and the marsh lands.

- for legal purposes, so we have evidences of the impact of the oil spill at the court of justice ;)

I'm in love with this technique Gonzo Earth and Grassrootsmapping keep on improving, also because I really need it to assess the efficiency of the oil spill collecting robot I am working on : protei.org. Here we were testing to see how well we can sail the robot upwind with a long tail :

that's the robot I am prototyping this week :

If you want to help on the making of the protei robot, or do some aerial photography of the oil spill, get involved at LA Bucket Brigade, contact Shannon Dosemagen <shannon@labucketbrigade.org>, or Hunter Daniel <hunterdaniel@gmail.com> 901-550-7667 directly by phone to arrange a trip in the sun :)

Filed under // Aerial Balloon Barataria Bay Grassrootsmapping Helium Jimmy LA Bucket Brigade LABB Louisiana Mapping NOLA New Orleans Oil Spill Photography Stitching TEDxBoston TEDxOilSpill Tilling

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Mapping River Dog Mouth, Mobile Alabama

Grassroots mapping camera mount ***

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