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How Many Reindeer? UAV Surveys as an Alternative to Helicopter or Ground Surveys for Estimating Population Abundance in Open Landscapes

Authors :
Ingrid Marie Garfelt Paulsen
Åshild Ønvik Pedersen
Richard Hann
Marie-Anne Blanchet
Isabell Eischeid
Charlotte van Hazendonk
Virve Tuulia Ravolainen
Audun Stien
Mathilde Le Moullec
Source :
Remote Sensing, Vol 15, Iss 1, p 9 (2022)
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

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.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20724292
Volume :
15
Issue :
1
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Remote Sensing
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.74363af3fad1478f95f8f1221963e6bf
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010009