Use of Participatory sUAS in Resilient Socioecological Systems (SES) Research: A Review and Case Study from the Southern Great Plains, USA

Since the publication of the seminal work People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and the Social Sciences, the call to “socialize the pixel” and “pixelize the social” has gone largely unheeded from a truly participatory research context. Instead, participatory remote sensing has primarily involved...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Drones (Basel) 2024-06, Vol.8 (6), p.223
Main Authors: Fagin, Todd D., Vadjunec, Jacqueline M., Boardman, Austin L., Hinsdale, Lanah M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural management
Agriculture
Cartography
Case studies
Climate change
Collaboration
Community
Community participation
Crowdsourcing
Data acquisition
Data processing
Drone aircraft
drones
Geospatial data
Land use planning
Literature reviews
Mapping
Mission planning
participatory remote sensing
Participatory research
PGIS
Phenology
Photogrammetry
Pixels
Remote sensing
Research projects
Social sciences
Southern Great Plains
Spatial data
sUAS
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Summary:Since the publication of the seminal work People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and the Social Sciences, the call to “socialize the pixel” and “pixelize the social” has gone largely unheeded from a truly participatory research context. Instead, participatory remote sensing has primarily involved ground truthing to verify remote sensing observations and/or participatory mapping methods to complement remotely sensed data products. However, the recent proliferation of relatively low-cost, ready-to-fly small unoccupied aerial systems (sUAS), colloquially known as drones, may be changing this trajectory. sUAS may provide a means for community participation in all aspects of the photogrammetric/remote sensing process, from mission planning and data acquisition to data processing and analysis. We present an overview of the present state of so-called participatory sUAS through a comprehensive literature review of recent English-language journal articles. This is followed by an overview of our own experiences with the use of sUAS in a multi-year participatory research project in an agroecological system encompassing a tri-county/tri-state region in the Southern Great Plains, USA. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities and challenges associated with our experience.
ISSN:2504-446X
2504-446X
DOI:10.3390/drones8060223