Presentation made to CCRI as part of our seminar series. Footage of seminar: https://youtu.be/tWcArqtqxjI Latvian meadows are inextricably connected to the Latvian identity. An identity built on the concept of the industrious peasant working their own land, free from the oppression of tyrannical regimes. This cultural association also feeds into the mid-summer festivals as the women weave the flower-filled crowns and people collect herbal teas to ward off illness over the winter. These biodiverse havens are under threat, as they are neglected or replaced with improved grasslands with their higher yields but lower diversity.

1. Latvian Meadows:
Past, present and
future!
Dr. Joanna Storie
Head of Master Programmes
Chair of Landscape Architecture
Estonian University of Life Sciences

2. Latvian Identity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZzdjP_-Nfo

3. Past identities

4. Saunas and the Meadows

5. Appreciation
For the richness of the natural landscape

6. Structural Obstacles
• Lack of educational resources in rural areas
• Transportation
• Restricted market access
• Infrastructure – roads, administrative access
• Lack of transparency for landowners

7. Other Conflicts:
Wild boar
management in
Erglu Novads

8. Outcome

9. The future?

10. Our grassland
managers

11. CODECS:
A Living Lab Project
• to create a new generation of
methodologies and decision
support tools through a
participatory process
• centred on the needs of farmers
and societal challenges by linking
digital innovation to sustainable
development.

12. Using drones to
monitor grasslands
and meadows

13. Each farm has been
designated a biotope
Sensitive management is
crucial to the future of
rare plants, pollinators and
birds.

14. The farms
• Wooded meadows unique to the
Gauja national park, North Latvia
• The floodplains of Latgale in East
Latvia
• Hilly terrain, Central Latvia.

15. Process
• Meetings with the farmers
• What are their needs?
• Can the drones be used?
• Dialogue between grassland
expert, farmers and drone
operators

16. Farmer’s
questions: Tree
Mapping
• Question
• Can the precise locations of trees be
mapped to show tree height/volume of
canopy and tree species?
• Answer
• As I could see in the picture, the tree cover
is relatively sparse. Thus, it should be feasible
making the automatic delineation, but tree
species could be a problem.

17. Re-mapping
areas
• Question
• Can high resolution pictures be taken
in mid-June to help re-map protected
habitat types and subtypes (if it helps to
increase areas of subtypes with higher
subsidy payments).
• Answer
• If the number of subtypes are not too
large, it should be a simple task.

18. Detecting springs
• Is it possible to use a thermal camera on a drone
to find water springs (where the water is coming
from under the ground?)
• Myself, I hadn’t work with this in specific
and, by doing a very quick search, I couldn’t
find any study with this idea. In a similar
way, we could observe the thermal inertial
of lakes that kept warmer while the land
was cooling down in some late-afternoon
flights. In this way, it could be performed
depending on possible size of springs and
canopy closure.

19. Dam builders!
Question
• Can dam building by the beavers
be monitored?
Answer
• Perhaps a supervised or semi-
supervised segmentation could
work for this objective.
Source: Wikipedia

20. Expansive
species
• Question
• Can the extent of cow’s parsley
(Anthriscus sylvestris) be mapped
and monitored? The mapping of
this species could be a bit
complex.
• Answer
• Visually, it can be mistaken by
some similar plants. With enough
samples, maybe a machine-
learning algorithm could perform
a more accurate classification.

21. What Are The
Challenges?
• Seasonality/changing seasons
• Busy people
• Ensuring terminology is understood

22. What Next?
• Keep the dialogue going
• Ensure farmer’s stay on board
• Drone monitoring spring/summer
• First analysis in autumn
• Feed information back in an
understandable format

23. Thank you for
your
attention
JoannaTamar.Storie@emu.ee