Artificial intelligence enhances monitoring of threatened marbled murrelet
Artificial intelligence analysis of data gathered by acoustic recording devices is a promising new tool for monitoring the marbled murrelet and other secretive, hard-to-study species, research by Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service has shown.
The threatened marbled murrelet is an iconic and elusive Pacific Northwest seabird that relies on the sea for food but raises its young as far as 60 miles inland in mature and old-growth forests.
“There are very few species like it,” said co-author Matt Betts of the OSU College of Forestry. “And there’s no other bird that feeds in the ocean and travels such long distances to inland nest sites. This behavior is super unusual, and it makes studying this bird really challenging.”
A research team led by Adam Duarte of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station used data from acoustic recorders, originally placed to assist in monitoring northern spotted owl populations, at thousands of locations in federally managed forests in the Oregon Coast Range and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Researchers then developed a machine learning algorithm known as a convolutional neural network to mine the recordings for murrelet calls.
Findings, published in Ecological Indicators, were tested against known murrelet population data and determined to be correct at a rate exceeding 90%, meaning the recorders and AI are able to provide an accurate look at how much murrelets are calling in a given area.
“Our results offer considerable promise for species distribution modeling and long-term population monitoring for rare species,” Duarte said. “Monitoring that’s far less labor intensive than nest searching via telemetry, ground-based nest searches or traditional audio/visual techniques.”
College of Forestry graduate student Matthew Weldy joined Betts and Duarte in the study, along with Zachary Ruff of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Jonathon Valente, a former Oregon State postdoctoral researcher now at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Damon Lesmeister and Julianna Jenkins of the Forest Service.
Indigenous Knowledge and western science braided into recommendations for land managers
Two College of Forestry faculty are among the lead authors of a report that combines Indigenous Knowledge and western science for the purpose of informing future climate-adapted land management decisions across the United States. The authors say their recommendations include “practical and cultural
management interventions that could help avert the loss of thousands of acres of old-growth forest.”
The report, co-led by Cristina Eisenberg and Michael Paul Nelson of OSU and fire ecologists Susan Prichard of the University of Washington and Paul Hessburg of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, urges that Tribal stewardship practices such as thinning and burning be considered in future land management decisions by the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service had expressed interest in gaining a better understanding of the connection between Indigenous Knowledge and western science in land management planning.
“Our forests are in grave danger in the face of climate change,” said Eisenberg, the College of Forestry’s associate dean of inclusive excellence. “By braiding together Indigenous Knowledge with western science, we can view the problems with what is known as Two Eyed Seeing, to develop a path forward that makes our forests more resilient to the threats they are facing. That is what this report is working to accomplish.”
Eisenberg, who is Native American, is the associate dean of inclusive excellence and the Maybelle Clark
Macdonald Director of Tribal Initiatives for the college and Nelson is a professor of environmental philosophy and ethics.
“Our report is deeper than changes in policy and management—it proposes a fundamental change in the worldview guiding our current practices,” Nelson said. “Our writing team’s cultural, geographic and disciplinary diversity allows for guidance on a shift in paradigms around how we approach forest stewardship in the face of climate change.”
Represented on the core writing team are Tribal members and Forest Service personnel as well as faculty from North Carolina State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Idaho, the University of Minnesota, the University of Arizona, the University of California and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.
