Owned by three Kiwi families, Wairakei Estate is located just outside of Taupō in the Reporoa region. The estate totals a staggering 25,000ha covering farming, forestry, conservation, and geothermal areas.
In 2004, Wairakei Estate embarked on a journey to become world-leaders in sustainably managing a diverse collection of natural resources.
Image: A panorama on Wairakei Estate looking towards Mount Tauhara
Volly Solutions initially reached out to Wairakei Estate to see if there was interest in creating or updating farm maps for their properties. This was something that the Estate had already covered, however, with Volly Solutions being an aerial imagery company, Wairakei Estate staff asked if we could assist with another project.
The Project: Help capture forestry for ETS registrations and biodiversity data on retired farming land.
On the land owned, there is a mix of different terrains, some being farmable, while others not. Wairakei Estate wanted to make use of this unfarmable land and therefore decided to diversify with it.
Image: Preparing to send the drone up on one of the farms
Our role in the project was to assist with aerial data collection of recently planted areas by gathering proof of placement and identifying planted areas. Our initial data was captured over a few days, with more areas being completed over the last couple of years.
Areas were provided by the Wairakei Estate team before flights, allowing us to pre-plan flight paths in our mapping software. This ensured that all target areas were collected with no missing gaps and little overlap.
Using our processing software, we processed the images captured by the drone and provided GeoTIFF exports (geo-referenced images). These were utilised as proof of placement and submitted for ETS registration.
Image: The vegetation and stage of growth on Wairakei Estate varies a lot
In total, we mapped over 780ha to assist the Wairakei Estate team.