How do you survey a wetland without disturbing the habitat?

Wetland environments are often too ecologically sensitive for conventional ground-based survey teams. Our approach on wetland sites combines GPS-controlled remote sensing with UAV LiDAR — capturing high-resolution topographic data, vegetation height and ground elevation without personnel walking through the habitat. Where boundary points or control stations are required on the ground, we minimise access to established paths and access points only. The CHCNAV X500 UAV with LiDAR payload can capture a detailed terrain model of a wetland site in a single flight, producing data that ground-based methods would take days to collect — and could not produce at all in inaccessible areas.