How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes
Conservation of wildlife depends on precise and unbiased knowledge on the abundance and distribution of species. It is challenging to choose appropriate methods to obtain a sufficiently high detectability and spatial coverage matching the species characteristics and spatiotemporal use of the landsca...
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Language: | English |
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Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28486 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 |
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ftunivtroemsoe:oai:munin.uit.no:10037/28486 2023-05-15T15:07:17+02:00 How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes Paulsen, Ingrid M. Pedersen, Åshild Ø Hann, Richard Blanchet, Marie-Anne Eischeid, Isabell van Hazendonk, Charlotte Maartje Ravolainen, Virve Stien, Audun Le Moullec, Mathilde 2022-12-20 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28486 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 eng eng MDPI Remote Sensing https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/1/9 Paulsen IM, Pedersen ÅØ, Hann R, Blanchet ME, Eischeid I, van Hazendonk CM, Ravolainen V, Stien A, Le Moullec M. How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes. Remote Sensing. 2023;15(9) FRIDAID 2107909 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 2072-4292 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28486 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) openAccess Copyright 2022 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Journal article Tidsskriftartikkel Peer reviewed publishedVersion 2022 ftunivtroemsoe https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 2023-02-09T00:03:55Z Conservation of wildlife depends on precise and unbiased knowledge on the abundance and distribution of species. It is challenging to choose appropriate methods to obtain a sufficiently high detectability and spatial coverage matching the species characteristics and spatiotemporal use of the landscape. In remote regions, such as in the Arctic, monitoring efforts are often resource-intensive and there is a need for cheap and precise alternative methods. Here, we compare an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV; quadcopter) pilot survey of the non-gregarious Svalbard reindeer to traditional population abundance surveys from ground and helicopter to investigate whether UAVs can be an efficient alternative technology. We found that the UAV survey underestimated reindeer abundance compared to the traditional abundance surveys when used at management relevant spatial scales. Observer variation in reindeer detection on UAV imagery was influenced by the RGB greenness index and mean blue channel. In future studies, we suggest testing long-range fixed-wing UAVs to increase the sample size of reindeer and area coverage and incorporate detection probability in animal density models from UAV imagery. In addition, we encourage focus on more efficient post-processing techniques, including automatic animal object identification with machine learning and analytical methods that account for uncertainties. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Svalbard svalbard reindeer University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive Arctic Svalbard Remote Sensing 15 1 9 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Tromsø: Munin Open Research Archive |
op_collection_id |
ftunivtroemsoe |
language |
English |
description |
Conservation of wildlife depends on precise and unbiased knowledge on the abundance and distribution of species. It is challenging to choose appropriate methods to obtain a sufficiently high detectability and spatial coverage matching the species characteristics and spatiotemporal use of the landscape. In remote regions, such as in the Arctic, monitoring efforts are often resource-intensive and there is a need for cheap and precise alternative methods. Here, we compare an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV; quadcopter) pilot survey of the non-gregarious Svalbard reindeer to traditional population abundance surveys from ground and helicopter to investigate whether UAVs can be an efficient alternative technology. We found that the UAV survey underestimated reindeer abundance compared to the traditional abundance surveys when used at management relevant spatial scales. Observer variation in reindeer detection on UAV imagery was influenced by the RGB greenness index and mean blue channel. In future studies, we suggest testing long-range fixed-wing UAVs to increase the sample size of reindeer and area coverage and incorporate detection probability in animal density models from UAV imagery. In addition, we encourage focus on more efficient post-processing techniques, including automatic animal object identification with machine learning and analytical methods that account for uncertainties. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Paulsen, Ingrid M. Pedersen, Åshild Ø Hann, Richard Blanchet, Marie-Anne Eischeid, Isabell van Hazendonk, Charlotte Maartje Ravolainen, Virve Stien, Audun Le Moullec, Mathilde |
spellingShingle |
Paulsen, Ingrid M. Pedersen, Åshild Ø Hann, Richard Blanchet, Marie-Anne Eischeid, Isabell van Hazendonk, Charlotte Maartje Ravolainen, Virve Stien, Audun Le Moullec, Mathilde How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
author_facet |
Paulsen, Ingrid M. Pedersen, Åshild Ø Hann, Richard Blanchet, Marie-Anne Eischeid, Isabell van Hazendonk, Charlotte Maartje Ravolainen, Virve Stien, Audun Le Moullec, Mathilde |
author_sort |
Paulsen, Ingrid M. |
title |
How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
title_short |
How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
title_full |
How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
title_fullStr |
How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
title_full_unstemmed |
How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes |
title_sort |
how many reindeer? uav surveys as an alternative to helicopter or ground surveys for estimating population abundance in open landscapes |
publisher |
MDPI |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28486 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 |
geographic |
Arctic Svalbard |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Svalbard |
genre |
Arctic Svalbard svalbard reindeer |
genre_facet |
Arctic Svalbard svalbard reindeer |
op_relation |
Remote Sensing https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/1/9 Paulsen IM, Pedersen ÅØ, Hann R, Blanchet ME, Eischeid I, van Hazendonk CM, Ravolainen V, Stien A, Le Moullec M. How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes. Remote Sensing. 2023;15(9) FRIDAID 2107909 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 2072-4292 https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28486 |
op_rights |
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) openAccess Copyright 2022 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009 |
container_title |
Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
15 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
9 |
_version_ |
1766338828018122752 |