| Summary: | First tests suggest unmanned aircraft systems as safe and noninvasive means of monitoring ecological systems in the Arctic In a portion of Manitoba, Canada, so remote you have to fly in by helicopter, a research team led by the University of North Dakota and the American Museum of Natural History spent the summer in the polar bear capital of the world deploying the latest tool – Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) -- in a nearly five-decade-old ecological study. As part of the “Hudson Bay Project,” a collaborative research program that includes partners from the U.S. and Canada, the group conducted nearly 90 test flights from Wapusk National Park to show that UAS can be used to study noninvasively the overabundant geese in the region and their impact on the tundra landscape. In addition to combining effectiveness and efficiency, the single unmanned aircraft used by the team generated more than 80,000 detailed images last June and July—UAS studies are also safer than foot surveys that put researchers at risk of encounters with bears. “This technology has propelled us well into the 21st century,” said Robert Rockwell, a research associate in the Museum’s Department of Ornithology and a senior scientist of the Hudson Bay Project. Rockwell, who has been counting geese in the area since the late 1960s, teamed up last year with UND biologists Susan Ellis-Felege, Robert Newman, Chris Felege, UAS expert Michael Corcoran, and students Andrew Barnas and Sam Hervey to explore the use of UAS at the remote Canadian camp. “We have been able to enhance and extend our geographical coverage, and to do it in a way that precludes potential disturbances of the very ecosystem we are studying,” Rockwell said. “It also helps us avoid confrontation with the ever-present bears, the region’s top predators. The first year’s operations were a grand success by any measure, and I look forward to expanding our efforts in 2016 and beyond.” The team is the first to be given permits to develop UAS technology in a national park in Canada. The new tool ...
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