Drone orthomosaic of Minnesota forest late in the season. Most of the canopy is bare grey branches; a cluster of shrubs near the centre is still carrying bright green leaves. Research flight, Lake County, MN — shrubs still green after leaf-drop

County and municipal programs

A map of plants
worth a walk.

For weed supervisors, conservation districts, and city land staff. A flight shows plants that reach the canopy. A person keeps or rejects each mark before it is a record. The crew walks what is left.

Talk about a parcel

A review queue for one job. Your staff decides what enters the record.

When a department calls

A season, a contract, or a report is already due.

The flight is a way to see a parcel faster than a crew can walk it. What you can defend afterward is still what a person checked.

What a county can count on

Two lists. One is the deliverable. One stays your call.

In the deliverable

  • A map of candidate plants where the canopy surface shows them.
  • Each mark labeled with the model, version, and run that produced it.
  • A separate human verdict: kept, rejected, or sent on a walk.
  • A GIS export of the reviewed set, for ArcGIS or QGIS.
  • Imagery and verdicts held under the landowner's or grantee's agreement.

Still yours to decide

  • Whether a mark is a plant. A candidate is not a confirmation.
  • Stems under closed canopy. Those are a transect.
  • Acres treated, a contractor's invoice, and a grant's performance fields.
  • A result copied from another county. A new site gets its own first pass, agreed before anyone treats a candidate as a find.
  • Putting an unreviewed map in front of a board.

Decision support. The map helps a department aim a crew and write a scope. The crew, the contractor, and the field evidence a grant already requires stay in the job.

How a job runs

Four steps from a parcel to a list someone can walk.

  1. 01

    Scope the flight

    Parcels, the plant, and the week it has to happen. For woody plants that hold their leaves, that week is after native leaf-drop. Capture can be yours, or coordinated. Timing matters more than the camera.

  2. 02

    Put it on a map

    A georeferenced orthomosaic, including multi-gigabyte files, is tiled for review. A detector proposes candidates where plants are visible from above, each one traceable to the run that made it.

  3. 03

    A person decides

    Desktop for a sweep of the parcel, or a phone on the ground for the stops worth making. The model's mark and the person's verdict are stored apart, so a later review can tell them apart.

  4. 04

    Hand off a list

    Reviewed locations, polygons for the places a person confirmed, and an export your GIS shop can open. The crew leaves with a route. The walk is the record of what was there.

The photograph on this page

A Minnesota research flight, late in the season.

Most of the canopy is bare. A cluster of shrubs is still green. That contrast is why a late flight can show a woody invasive — common buckthorn, on this site — that a summer flight hides in the leaves. It is one place we have studied. It is an example of the tell, and it is not a finished treatment map.

A different plant is a different question. Herbaceous weeds under closed canopy do not become visible because the file is large. We will say so before a flight is scheduled.

Questions a board will ask

The things a department has to answer.

How accurate is it?
We do not publish one accuracy number. A detector can look ready on the flights it learned from and miss plants on the next site, and a single percentage would hide that. Nothing enters your records until a person has accepted it. On a new site the first pass is agreed up front, against ground you already know where you have it. That result belongs to the job, not to a brochure.
Does this replace our crew or our contractor?
The crew still does the work that counts. Where plants show from above, the review shortens the search so people arrive with a route. Every engagement pairs those candidates with transects. Whoever signs the treatment record is still the one who signs it.
Can it see under the canopy?
A drone sees the canopy surface. We use it where a woody invasive is actually visible: edges, gaps, and openings, flown after native leaf-drop while the target is still green. Interior stems are picked up on the transects, not from the orthomosaic.
Which plants?
The photograph above is common buckthorn on a Lake County, Minnesota research flight, caught by leaf retention. Bring the species you manage. If it does not show at the canopy in a season you can fly, the honest answer is a walk, and we will say that before you spend the flight.
What do we need to bring?
A georeferenced GeoTIFF if you already have one. If you have not flown, send the parcel and the plant and we will scope capture with you. Multi-gigabyte files are expected.
What can we hand a board or a funder?
The reviewed map, the verdicts, and the transects. Unreviewed detections stay in the working file. Acres treated come from the crew. A second flight can show canopy change on the stems that were visible the first time, beside those same transects.
Who owns the imagery?
You do. Project imagery and review data stay under the landowner's or grantee's control as defined in the agreement. We process it under contract to produce the deliverables, and we do not sell project landowner data as a product without written agreement.
How does a county start?
Write with the plant, the acres, and the season you are in. We answer whether a flight can see it and what the first pass would be. Sign-in is for an engagement that is already open.

Start with a parcel

Tell us the plant, the acres, and the season.

We will say whether a flight can see it, what the first pass should be, and what you would be able to take to a board.

Talk about a parcel