Prospects of using unmanned aerial vehicles for detecting fossil mammoth ivory fields in the Arctic

• Main Authors: A. N. Smirnov, K. K. Kalinovskii, N. V. Glinskaya, I. S. Dergacheva, M. A. Kalinovskaia, V. V. Petrov, А. Н. Смирнов, К. К. Калиновский, Н. В. Глинская, И. С. Дергачёва, М. А. Калиновская, В. В. Петров
• Other Authors: This work was carried out within the state assignment of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Academician I.S. Gramberg All-Russia Scientific Research Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean” (FSBI “VNIIOkeangeologia”) to assess the mineral resource potential of the offshore regions of the Russian Federation., Данная работа осуществлена при выполнении государственного задания ФГБУ «ВНИИОкеангеология» по оценке минерально-сырьевого потенциала шельфовых областей Российской Федерации
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: Государственный научный центр Российской Федерации Арктический и антарктический научно-исследовательский институт 2024
• Subjects: Якутия; geobotanical zones; exposed mammoth tusks; fossil ivory; North Yakutsk bone-bearing province; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); Yakutia; геоботанические зоны; кость мамонтовая; криолитозона; мамонтовые бивни; Североякутская костеносная провинция; Arctic; Ice; permafrost; Yakutsk; Якути*
• Online Access: https://www.aaresearch.science/jour/article/view/596; https://doi.org/10.30758/0555-2648-2024-70-1-103-116

In recent decades, fossil ivory, the tusks of the Siberian mammoth of the late type (Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach, 1799), has been in great demand on the world market of gemstone raw materials. Fossil ivory is a valuable highly liquid natural raw material of biogenic origin. With its decorative and technological characteristics, it is a fossil analogue of the tusks of the present-day African and Asian elephant (the populations of which are protected by UNESCO), used for the production of carved articles of great aesthetic value. Industrial clusters of mammoth tusks are concentrated in just a few Arctic regions of Russia: the only region today which holds confirmed industrial potential of fossil mammoth ivory (actually recoverable resources) is Northern Yakutia. This is due to the limited number of territories whose paleogeographic and landscape-ecological conditions were favorable for mammoths in the Late Pleistocene, as well as to the taphonomic conditions conducive to the long-term preservation of bone remains in permafrost conditions. Placer accumulations of mammoth tusks are formed as a result of denudation of cryogenic bone reservoirs containing up to 90% ice; the main destructive factors are various types of thermal erosion, which contributes to the formation of new accumulations. Today, just as centuries ago, the search for fossil ivory, is carried out mainly by walking over large areas in remote areas of the Russian Arctic. The search objects are fully or partially exposed fossil ivory lying on the surface (in the surface layer) of present-day sedimentary formations in various landscape-geomorphological and geobotanical settings. The current period of studying and exploiting the natural resources in Russia is characterized by the active use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with video cameras, which significantly reduces the complexity of research in various fields of their application. We have carried out experimental and methodological work for the visual recognition of exposed mammoth tusks in ...