scholarly journals Precision wildlife monitoring using unmanned aerial vehicles

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jarrod C. Hodgson ◽  
Shane M. Baylis ◽  
Rowan Mott ◽  
Ashley Herrod ◽  
Rohan H. Clarke
Sensors ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Gonzalez ◽  
Glen Montes ◽  
Eduard Puig ◽  
Sandra Johnson ◽  
Kerrie Mengersen ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Yun Long Lan ◽  
Ahmed Sony Kamal ◽  
Carlo Lopez-Tello ◽  
Ali Pour Yazdanpanah ◽  
Emma E. Regentova ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 312-324
Author(s):  
Louise K. Blight ◽  
Douglas F. Bertram ◽  
Edward Kroc

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in wildlife monitoring has increased in recent years, particularly in hard-to-access habitats. We used fixed-wing and quadcopter drones to census an urban-nesting population of Glaucous-winged Gulls in Victoria, Canada. We conducted our study over 2 years and asked whether (i) drones represent a suitable survey method for rooftop-nesting gulls in our study region; and (ii) Victoria’s urban gull population had increased since the last survey >30 years earlier. Using orthomosaic imagery derived from drone overflights, we estimated at least a threefold increase over the 1986 count reported for the entire city (from 114 to 346 pairs), and an approximate tenfold increase in the number of gulls nesting in the downtown core. Drones proved to be an excellent platform from which to census rooftop-nesting birds: occupied nests were readily discernible in our digital imagery, and incubating birds were undisturbed by drones. This lack of disturbance may be due to Victoria’s location in an aerodrome; gulls experience dozens of floatplane and helicopter flights per day and are likely habituated to air traffic. Glaucous-winged Gulls have declined considerably at their natural island colonies in the region since the 1980s. Our results indicate that although urban roofs provide replacement nesting habitat for this species, local gull populations have not simply relocated en masse from islands to rooftops in the region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lu ◽  
Feng Xu ◽  
Mardan Aghabey Turghan

Recent technological innovations have led to an upsurge in the availability of unmanned aerial vehicles (also known as drones and hereafter referred to as UAVs)—aircraft remotely operated from the ground—which are increasingly popular tools for ecological research, and the question of this study concerns the extent to which wildlife responses might allow aerial wildlife monitoring (AWM) by UAVs. Our experiment tests the hypothesis that the wildlife-UAVs interaction depends strongly on flight altitude that there may be a lowest altitude range for which the ungulates are not exceedingly disturbed, dictating a practically achievable level of discernibility in flight observation, for this question might influence the future viability of the UAVs in the study and protection of the other wildlife in China’s semiarid ecosystem. We examined the behavioral responses of a group of enclosed Przewalski’s horses (Equus ferus przewalskii) to the presence of different in-flight UAVs models by conducting flights at altitudes ranging from 1 to 52 meters and recorded the heights at which each horse reacted to (noticed and fled) the UAVs. All horses exhibited a stress response to UAVs flights as evidenced by running away. The results suggest strong correlations between flight altitude and response across the different subjects that adults generally noticed the UAVs at the larger heights (20.58 ± 10.46 m) than the immature (4.67 ± 0.87 m). Meanwhile, reaction heights of females (15.85 ± 6.01 m) are smaller than that of males (26.85 ± 18.52 m). Supported by their biological roles in herds (e.g., males must give protection to his entire herd while females are purely responsible for their offspring), our results also show that age, closely followed by gender, are the two most significant elements that determine a horse’s level of alertness to the UAVs. This research will help future scientists to better gauge the appropriate height to use a drone for animal observation in order to minimize disturbance and best preserve their natural behavior.


Author(s):  
A.A. Moykin ◽  
◽  
A.S. Medzhibovsky ◽  
S.A. Kriushin ◽  
M.V. Seleznev ◽  
...  

Nowadays, the creation of remotely-piloted aerial vehicles for various purposes is regarded as one of the most relevant and promising trends of aircraft development. FAU "25 State Research Institute of Chemmotology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation" have studied the operation features of aircraft piston engines and developed technical requirements for motor oil for piston four-stroke UAV engines, as well as a new engine oil M-5z/20 AERO in cooperation with NPP KVALITET, LLC. Based on the complex of qualification tests, the stated operational properties of the experimental-industrial batch of M-5z/20 AERO oil are generally confirmed.


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