Drones count wildlife more accurately and precisely than humans. Issue 5 (13th February 2018)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Drones count wildlife more accurately and precisely than humans. Issue 5 (13th February 2018)
- Main Title:
- Drones count wildlife more accurately and precisely than humans
- Authors:
- Hodgson, Jarrod C.
Mott, Rowan
Baylis, Shane M.
Pham, Trung T.
Wotherspoon, Simon
Kilpatrick, Adam D.
Raja Segaran, Ramesh
Reid, Ian
Terauds, Aleks
Koh, Lian Pin - Editors:
- Yoccoz, Nigel
- Abstract:
- Abstract: Knowing how many individuals are in a wildlife population allows informed management decisions to be made. Ecologists are increasingly using technologies, such as remotely piloted aircraft (RPA; commonly known as "drones, " unmanned aerial systems or unmanned aerial vehicles), for wildlife monitoring applications. Although RPA are widely touted as a cost‐effective way to collect high‐quality wildlife population data, the validity of these claims is unclear. Using life‐sized, replica seabird colonies containing a known number of fake birds, we assessed the accuracy of RPA‐facilitated wildlife population monitoring compared to the traditional ground‐based counting method. The task for both approaches was to count the number of fake birds in each of 10 replica seabird colonies. We show that RPA‐derived data are, on average, between 43% and 96% more accurate than the traditional ground‐based data collection method. We also demonstrate that counts from this remotely sensed imagery can be semi‐automated with a high degree of accuracy. The increased accuracy and increased precision of RPA‐derived wildlife monitoring data provides greater statistical power to detect fine‐scale population fluctuations allowing for more informed and proactive ecological management.
- Is Part Of:
- Methods in ecology and evolution. Volume 9:Issue 5(2018)
- Journal:
- Methods in ecology and evolution
- Issue:
- Volume 9:Issue 5(2018)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 9, Issue 5 (2018)
- Year:
- 2018
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 5
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2018-0009-0005-0000
- Page Start:
- 1160
- Page End:
- 1167
- Publication Date:
- 2018-02-13
- Subjects:
- bird -- drones -- ecology -- population monitoring -- remotely piloted aircraft -- surveys -- unmanned aerial vehicle -- wildlife
Ecology -- Periodicals
Evolution -- Periodicals
577 - Journal URLs:
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2041-210X ↗
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1111/2041-210X.12974 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 2041-210X
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 17512.xml