Nearview

Nearview is grateful to have the opportunity to map the salt marshes of Acadia National Park in Maine! This important survey, supported by NOAA’s Effects of Sea Level Rise (ESLR) Program and National Park Service, aims to gather baseline data to better understand storm-related inundation and erosion affecting marshes in the region. In January and March 2024, multiple coastal storms—accompanied by hurricane-force winds and record-high water levels—caused significant damage to the natural and cultural resources across Acadia National Park. The extended flooding and erosion from storm surge and wave damage may have impacted the integrity of marshes and populations of culturally significant plants, such as sweetgrass. Mapping the distribution of these plants and providing accurate baseline elevation data is crucial to understanding marsh dynamics following storm events. The information we collect will help prepare for higher sea levels and increasingly intense storms, as well as support restoration activities and co-stewardship planning with sweetgrass gatherers, Wabanaki scientists and communities. We plan to follow up our drone-based multispectral imaging with lidar surveys at Acadia in the spring of 2025. #SaltMarsh #RemoteSensing #EarthObservation #UAS #Drone #Multispectral #SeaLevelRise #LiDAR #Wabanaki #Sweetgrass #NPS #AcadiaNationalPark #NOAA #NCCOS #ESLR #CoastalResilience

The sun is setting on our NOAA SBIR project to map wild intertidal seaweed and provide a digital map platform in support of stakeholders – seaweed harvesters and producers, resource managers, and conservationists. It has been 4+ years of R&D, from our initial award through the Maine Economic Improvement Fund – Small Campus Initiative through to our NOAA Phase I and II SBIR awards. We wish to thank all our partner institutions Maine Maritime Academy, Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab, Center for Business Analytics - Paul College, UNH, and Maine Seaweed Council for providing amazing staff, research, and support. And a shout out to NOAA SBIR program administrators and Larta Institute. We couldn’t have done it without you! Within the next couple of months, we will release the Coastal Ecosystem Map Application Platform (CEMAP). The initial prototype is focused on Maine’s seaweed (wild intertidal and farmed), but plans are already underway for geographic expansion of this modular application to include other themes such as Site Suitability modeling for nature-based solutions, and access to high-resolution shorelines (MHHW, MHW, MLW, MLLW). Stay tuned . . . #naturebasedsolutions #marinescience #marineecology #remotesensing #earthobservation #noaasbir #noaainnovation #seaweed #aquaculture #uas #drone

Excited to share that Nearview is collaborating with ARE Corporation and the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve to map the salt marshes of New Hampshire! This marks our first project using our newly acquired Riegl VUX-1 UAV lidar sensor equipped with dual RGB cameras. Our digital terrain model of the Odiorne salt marsh showcases the incredible applications of drone lidar technology. The lidar survey products shown here will be instrumental for GBNERR and the State of New Hampshire in mapping hydrodynamics, identifying historic ditches, dikes, and ponding areas, and pinpointing precise locations for restoration and conservation efforts. Ultimately, these valuable digital data products will be available to the public through NOAA Digital Coast. Reach out to us for your coastal ecosystem mapping needs! #naturebasedsolutions #saltmarshrestoration #sealevelrise #lidar #uas #digitalcoast #noaa #dronesforgood

Finally – a publicly available spectral library of salt marsh plants for northern New England! Working with Schoodic Institute, Nearview has compiled a comprehensive spectral library of salt marsh species sampled in 2023 at three separate marsh sites across the coast of Maine. As stated by Schoodic Institute, “as the coast continues to experience pressure from changing land uses amid a changing climate, there is a need, recently expressed by the Maine Climate Council, to map and track changes in the distribution and abundance of coastal vegetation habitats.” The spectral library is a tool built to help with mapping and tracking change. This library can be downloaded from Nearview’s Speclib website: https://lnkd.in/eXi3B4R2. As a member of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), Nearview believes in the FAIR guiding principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse) for earth science digital data. While we have not completed our metadata to check all the FAIR boxes for this dataset, the survey season is upon us, and we want to make these data available to the scientific community as soon as possible. If you need help with mapping salt marsh for monitoring or restoration – reach out, we can do that! #saltmarsh #remotesensing #drones #dronesforgood #multispectral #hyperspectral #environmentalscience #marinescience Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park Nearview Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) #naturebasedsolutions #sealevelrise

Amazing trip to the other Gulf this week to participate in the Mississippi Power-hosted Blue Economy event. A full day of visits and meets with DoD at Nasa Stennis Space Center, pitches, networking, and southern hospitality. Will Nearview expand it’s aerial drone environmental surveying and geospatial analytics to the Gulf shore? We hope so - exciting opportunities ahead in a supportive blue economy biz ecosystem. #blueeconomy #marinescience #environmentalscience #geospatial #drones #uas

The view from the office with the Ohio Valley Archaeology, Inc. crew on the bold coast of Maine this week has been amazing. Always excited to get Downeast to survey, explore, and experience the iconic Maine coast. #archaeology

A new version of our Coastal Ecosystem Spectral Library (CESL) is now live! We have expanded the holdings to include not only seaweed but also salt marsh plants, seagrasses, and sediments. We also recently completed multiple salt marsh and rocky intertidal surveys in Maine with Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park and have uploaded a new tranche of data with more to come in the spring. A number of new satellite and airborne hyperspectral sensors are now coming online ushering in a new era of remote sensing, but reference spectra for accurate interpretation of hyperspectral imagery is significantly lacking. The goal of CESL is to support the earth observation community with high quality reference spectra, identify the spectral signatures associated with coastal habitats, provide training data for modeling, and help monitor change and migration of coastal vegetation, sediments, and habitats over time. CESL is open access, and data is free to explore and download. We also welcome the contributions of researchers from around the world. Please help us make CESL the best spectral repository possible for intertidal and coastal ecosystems. Please reach out to us if you have any questions, or request assistance for uploading data to CESL! https://lnkd.in/ebWdtBgx #hyperspectral #multispectral #remotesensing #earthobservation #coastalecosystem #marineecology #seaweed #bluecarbon #saltmarsh #eelgrass #seagrass #environmentalscience

Mapping the RGBs of seaweeds – that is the Red, Green, Brown (RGB) groups of seaweeds, and their RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and NIR-SWIR spectral signatures. Perfectly stratified groupings at this mid-coast Maine site. With a growing number of satellite and airborne hyperspectral sensors, ground reference spectra will be essential for accurate #earthobservation. We continue the work of building out our open-access Coastal Ecosystems Spectral Library (CESL) and will be releasing a new version of CESL in the coming days that will include seaweed, salt marsh plants, seagrass, and sediments. https://lnkd.in/ebWdtBgx. Stay tuned! #hyperspectral #multispectral #environmentalscience #marineecosystem #marineecology #remotesensing #seaweed #saltmarsh #eelgrass #seagrass #uas #dronesforgood