Surveillance
The LCMCD has divided Lee County into six geographic areas, with each assigned a helicopter, pilot and aerial inspector. Inside each of these areas are known sites with low-lying land that holds water following heavy rains or high tides. There are hundreds of these egg- laden locations, and they are key to staying ahead of the mosquito population.
Following a heavy rain, a full day of surveillance may require an aerial inspection team to land at 20 to 30 different dip sites, which are small landing zones carved out of the mangroves. For all the high-tech equipment and scientific methods used in the job of mosquito control, the surveillance portion is a very low-tech manual process.
“These aerial inspectors know their areas inside out, every little puddle that might be breeding; even a small hole can create hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes,” said Thurbie Botterill, chief pilot for LCMCD.
The process looks like this: land the helicopter, hike into the woods, use a handheld dip net to scoop water from low areas, then count the mosquito larvae in the dip net. Although this task is simple, the data obtained by that low- tech dip net is the genesis for every downstream decision related to mission planning. Whether to be preventative or reactive. What products to use. Where to spray. What type of product delivery system to use. What aircraft to use, and so on.
Mission Planning
Immediately following the manual surveillance of an area, the process instantly departs from the low-tech dip nets into the realm of a high-tech, data-driven environment. Once the surveillance data is obtained, it’s immediately uploaded to a server to guide a digital mission planning process.
Once the surveillance of an area is complete and the data is uploaded, the team typically has only a few days to develop and execute a mission plan for that geographic location, otherwise an application may become ineffective. Using the surveillance data, digital mapping software, weather forecasts, tidal charts, science, and a little gut instinct, the team will build mission plans to treat the area.
Mission plans will determine: • •
•
What product will be used (larvicide / adulticide) What aircraft will be used (helicopter, airplane, UAS)
• What distribution method will be used (granular, spray, ultra- low volume aka ULV)
When the flights will occur, day or night
• The exact area to be treated and flight paths to be flown (aka the “polygons”)
Once the mission plans are created, pilots can download their polygons for the day’s flights directly to the helicopter’s mapping system. Multiple polygons can be flown in one flight. The pilot will typically begin with the site farthest away and work their way back to the airport. Larviciding (killing mosquitoes in the larvae stage) will traditionally occur during daylight hours using either the helicopters or the UAS, depending on the location and the volume required. For
52 Sep/Oct 2022
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