EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/egusphere-2026-527 Brief communication: Improving botanical monitoring in proglacial areas with high-resolution UAV data Deschamps-Berger César https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3017-5250 1 2 Carretero Roque Nahia 1 Revuelto Jesús https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5483-0147 1 Rojas-Heredia Francisco https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6718-4065 1 Vidaller Ixeia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8136-7688 1 Alvarez Aina 1 López-Varela Alba 1 Fernández Olatz 1 Palacio Sara 1 Lopez-Moreno Juan Ignacio https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7270-9313 1 Tejero Ibarra Pablo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6735-3423 1 Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, Zaragoza, Spain GEODE, UMR, CNRS, University of Jean‐Jaurès, Toulouse, France 05 02 2026 2026 1 12 Copyright: © 2026 César Deschamps-Berger et al. 2026 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-527/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-527/egusphere-2026-527.pdf

Proglacial areas are undergoing rapid ecological and land cover changes as glaciers retreat globally. Field campaigns are essential in proglacial environments to monitor the colonization of the deglaciated areas by the vegetation. In this study, we evaluate the benefit of using optical UAV images to optimize botanical data collection during these campaigns. We compared the vegetation cover measured in situ by experts with the vegetation cover derived from high-resolution UAV images in a high-mountain environment below the Aneto glacier in the Pyrenees. Retrieving the vegetation cover from UAV images provided valuable and complementary data to traditional in situ detailed observations.

 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MARGISNOW (PID2021-124220OB-100) FJC2021‐047268‐I Fundación BBVA MeltingIce Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales Postdoctoral funding Interreg FLORAPYR 3D (EFA064/01)