2021 was a highly productive year for Geographic Techniques. We began the year flying our UAV (drone) for a local Madison commercial developer, recording monthly progress videos of construction projects, which lasted through the summer. Unfortunately, we lost a drone during a Spring video shoot due to a lost communications link combined with gusty winds. Fortunately, no one was hurt and it did not cause any property damage. Thankfully we had drone insurance to cover the cost of replacement. This is the second drone we've lost during the course of our UAV projects since we first began flying, which just goes to show that the inevitable will happen. This is why we are fully insured and follow risk mitigation plans for every flight.
Our 2021 mapping projects included Driftless Trail maps for two trail segments in southern Wisconsin. Currently an ongoing project, the maps highlight the foot-only trails, to be used for hiking, running, snowshoeing, or cross country skiing. In a separate request, another trail map was created for The Prairie Enthusiasts (TPE), highlighting the Rattlesnake Ridge preserve hiking trails near the Village of Arena, Wisconsin. As a segue to this post, we've included a fly-through video (below) of a portion of the Driftless Trail, just north of Governor Dodge State Park, which was created solely from LiDAR point cloud data and NAIP aerial imagery. Okay, so we were just having a bit of fun with that!
We also finished up our Public Lands map for the Friends of Cherokee Marsh kiosk project. The map shows hiking trails and other visitor information for the Cherokee Marsh watershed. And we are in the process of creating LiDAR derived imagery of Native American Indian mound sites in Dodge County, Wisconsin, for two expert historians currently writing a book on that county's mounds.
We look forward to continuing these and other projects throughout 2022. Please visit our Projects page for more details and updates throughout the year.
Have a safe and prosperous Happy New Year!