RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Drones count wildlife more accurately and precisely than humans
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 165019
DO 10.1101/165019
A1 Hodgson, Jarrod C.
A1 Mott, Rowan
A1 Baylis, Shane M.
A1 Pham, Trung T.
A1 Wotherspoon, Simon
A1 Kilpatrick, Adam D.
A1 Segaran, Ramesh Raja
A1 Reid, Ian
A1 Terauds, Aleks
A1 Koh, Lian Pin
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/165019.abstract
AB Ecologists are increasingly using technology to improve the quality of data collected on wildlife, particularly for assessing the environmental impacts of human activities. Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS; commonly known as ‘drones’) are widely touted as a cost-effective way to collect high quality wildlife population data, however, the validity of these claims is unclear. Using life-sized seabird colonies containing a known number of replica birds, we show that RPAS-derived data are, on average, between 43% and 96% more accurate than data from the traditional ground-based 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 precision of RPAS-derived wildlife monitoring data provides greater statistical power to detect fine-scale population fluctuations allowing for more informed and proactive ecological management.