Fellowship Title: Using drone-based remote sensing tools to monitor impact of mangrove restoration actions in the Terraba-Sierpe National Wetland, Costa Rica

Fellowship Summary 

The Osa Conservation Mangrove Program has developed community-led mangrove restoration actions in over 130 hectares within the Terraba-Sierpe National Wetland in Costa Rica since 2018. The initiative also includes a long-term monitoring program to assess the impact and success of restoration actions through the analyses of structural complexity, physico-chemical characteristics, and biodiversity throughout the restored sites. It is becoming urgent to develop innovative methodologies and tools that allow conservationists to accelerate and inform adaptive management of conservation actions on the ground based on monitoring data. Drone-based high-resolution imagery can be used to generate orthophotos and digital elevation models to assess in the long term the impact of the restoration efforts in remote areas and reduce the amount of resources needed to monitor on-the-ground.

Fellowship Purpose 

  • Evaluate the use of drone imagery and its application for monitoring forest structure of restoration sites in the Térraba-Sierpe National Wetland.
  • Identify changes in canopy cover within restoration sites in the Térraba-Sierpe National Wetland.
  • Create digital elevation models to estimate the average increase in heights of trees planted at mangrove restoration sites.
  • Organize the aerial images data generated within the Mangrove Programme field trips.
  • Develop a methodological protocol and data pipeline to implement long-term monitoring of forest structure using drone imagery and remote sensing. 

Detailed work plan 

During the six-month project the Fellow will assess and generate a methodological procedure on the potential to use drone-based imagery to monitor mangrove restoration impact in the Terraba Sierpe National wetland. To achieve the fellowship goal, during the first month the fellow will design a work plan to achieve the proposed outputs and will focus on the systematization and classification of spatial data and imagery of the Mangrove Program.

The second to the fourth month will focus on the classification and digitization of aerial images of the Permanent Monitoring Plots (PPM) from 2021 to 2024; the creation of orthophotos from the aerial photographs provided over the restoration sites established between 2018 and 2020; and the development of a methodology for the digital elevation models.

The fifth and sixth months will focus on data analyses and development of the methodological guidelines for long-term monitoring of forest cover dynamics using drone imagery. 

Throughout the fellowship the Fellow will participate in different multidisciplinary meetings with the OC’s Conservation Programs and will also support the Mangrove team with field work and/or education activities in the Terraba-Sierpe wetland.

Fellowship Outputs 

  • Maps or images of forest cover of the permanent monitoring plots with their respective information table on the percentage of forest cover area and the total increase between measurement periods.
  • High-quality orthophotos of the different restoration sites of interest.
  • A Digital Elevation Model of the different restoration sites 
  • Database folder with spatial data and metadata of all the layers created during the fellowship.
  • A Drone-based imagery Monitoring Guidelines for Mangrove Restoration that includes the methodology proposed for long-term monitoring and the results from the fellowship. 
  • A presentation during a science and conservation meeting to present the process and the preliminary results linked to the internship. 

Apply Today

To apply please send a CV and cover letter to hr@osaconservation.org with subject line “UF Fellowship – Mangroves ” by May 7, 2024. All applicants who do not follow this guide will not be considered. Only successful applicants continuing to the interview stage will be contacted. Please state in the cover letter why you want this opportunity specifically and what skills you can bring to the position. We encourage applicants from Latin America to apply.