In August 2019, we received significant funding from National Geographic to accelerate the development of our tool. This will allow scientists to benefit from our innovative sampling technique for their work in environmental science. New field tests with the Deleaves tool will be held over the next year with our partners from the University of British Columbia botanical garden and the Canadian Airborne Observatory Network.
This funding will also allow us to embark on the development of a new product. We will start working on a cliff sampling drone by 2020. This new project will be carried out in partnership with the National Tropical Botanical Garden of Hawaii. For some time now, scientists in this research group have started collecting images of plants on cliffs with a drone. This work led to the discovery of plant species that were thought to be extinct on Kauai Island. This National Geographic article explains the work done by our partners in relation to the preservation of biodiversity.
For this research project, our trips to different parts of Canada and those on Kauai Island will allow us to test our sampling tool in new environments. The developed technologies will then be available to researchers. These tools will facilitate the work of researchers working to preserve biodiversity.