Drone will assess damage to trees in Oakville

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The town of Oakville is going high tech in its efforts to preserve it’s natural assets. For the first time, Oakville is using a drone to hover over trees to take pictures and video. The images will help the town’s Forestry Department manage it’s tree population. Forestry Services Manager, John McNeil explained “Our 1.9 million trees in Oakville provides 2.3 million dollars worth of ecological benefits in terms of filtering pollutants, shading our homes saving air conditioning bills and providing oxygen.”

But an insect called the Emerald Ash Borer has killed millions of Ash trees in Southwestern Ontario. The 3000 dollar drone is taking pictures and video of the canopy to see how much damage has been done. “We’re going to archive the photos and then do comparisons in the future years and measure any percent changes to the canopy.”

Oakville will assess if the forest is making positive changes on its own, or if the town needs to step in. Mandy Ehnes is a biologist from Algoma University in Sault Saint Marie. She’s working with the town and says if a forests canopy gets thin other species could die. “A pond could dry up because of loss of canopy and we will know if we’re losing frog species as well. I want to know how much tree death and the composition of the species living in the area that will be for Oakville to help them know that certain canopy allows for this type of organism to live.”

The Forest Health Research project will be ongoing until September 17th but the drone will only be capturing images of municipal forest canopies and not private properties. It may be a small drone but it has a big job to do.