Examining the Potential of Micro-Aerial Vehicles for Tree Inspections as Climate Change Education Tools

Our research objective is to examine the impact of aerial tree inspections with micro-aerial vehicles (in short: micro drones) on students' climate education. Climate change threatens the health and survival of trees and forests. Aerial tree inspections represent an important climate change education approach to explain the urgency of climate change adaptation and climate solutions to draw down greenhouse gases. They are also useful tools to appreciate the technical components of micro drones such as external proximity sensors for obstacle avoidance, the fully enclosed propulsion system that allows flight inside dense jungle canopy or the macro-focused high-definition video feed with onboard 10W illumination so that dark areas can be inspected. With such a system, arborists no longer need to manually climb and scale trees. Our research goal is to examine the impact of climate education with micro-aerial vehicles for tree inspections on achieving important learning outcomes such as catalyzing students' climate change awareness and action. We regard micro drones as quality climate change teaching & learning tools that can improve students' engagement with climate change and increase their capacity to adapt to climate change by enhancing sustainability-related competencies and motivating them towards more pro-environmental, carbon offsetting behavior in the context of climate action.