By Leila Lemos, PhD candidate
Fisheries and Wildlife Department, OSU
I am finally starting my 3rd and last year of my PhD. Just a year left and yet so many things to do. As per department requirements, I still need to take some class credits, but what classes could I take? In this short amount of time it is important to focus on my research project and on what could help me better understand the many branches of the project and what could improve my analyses. Thinking of that, both my advisor (Dr. Leigh G. Torres) and I agreed that it would be useful for me to take a class on remote sensing. So, I could learn more about this field, as well as try to include some remote sensing analyses in my project, such as sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll (i.e., as a productivity indicator) conditions over the years we have collected data on gray whales off the Oregon coast.
Our photogrammetry data indicates that whales gradually increased their body condition over the feeding seasons of 2016 and 2018, while 2017 is different. Whales were still looking skinny in the middle of the season, and we were not collecting many fecal samples up to that point (indicating not much feeding). These findings made us wonder if this was related to delayed seasonal upwelling events and consequently low prey availability. These questions are what motivated me the most to join this class so that we might be able to link environmental correlates with our observations of gray whale body condition.
Source: Leila S. Lemos
If we stop to think about what remote sensing is, we have already been implementing this method in our project since the beginning, as my favorite definition for remote sensing is “the art of collecting information of objects or phenomenon without touching it”. So, yes, the drone is a type of sensor that remotely collects information of objects (in this case, whales).
Source: Leila Lemos
However, satellites, all the way up in the space, are also remotely sensing the Earth and its objects and phenomena. Even from thousands of km above Earth, these sensors are capable of generating a great amount of detailed data that is easily and freely accessible (i.e., NASA, NOAA), and can be used for multiple applications in different fields of study. Satellites are also able to collect data from remote areas like the Antarctica and the Arctic, as well as other areas that are not easily reached by humans. One important application of the use of satellite imagery is wildlife monitoring.
For example, satellite data was used to detect variation in the abundance of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) in Erebus Bay, Antarctica (LaRue et al., 2011). Because this is a well-studied seal population, the object of this study was to test if satellite imagery could produce reliable abundance estimates. The authors used high-resolution (0.6 m) satellite imagery (from satellites Quick-Bird-2 and WorldView-1) to compare counts from the ground with counts from satellite images in the same locations at the same time. This study demonstrated a reliable methodology for further studies to replicate.
Source: LaRue et al. (2011).
Satellite imagery was also applied to estimate colony sizes of Adélie penguins in Antarctica (LaRue et al., 2014). High-resolution (0.6 m) satellite imagery combined with spectral analysiswas used to estimate the sizes of the penguin breeding colonies. Ground counts were also used in order to check the reliability of the applied method. The authors then created a model to predict the abundance of breeding pairs as a function of the habitat, which was identified terrain slope as an important component of nesting density.
The identification of whales using satellite imagery is also possible. Fretwell et al. (2014)pioneered this method by successfully identifing Southern Right Whales (Eubalaena australis) in the Golfo Nuevo, Península Valdés, in Argentina in satellite images. By using very high-resolution satellite imagery (50 cm resolution) and a water penetrating coastal band that was able to see deeper into the water column, the researchers were able to successfully identify and count the whales (Fig. 04). The importance of this study was very significant, since this species was extensively hunted from the 17ththrough to the 20thcentury. Since then, the species has shown a strong recovery, but population estimates are still at <15% of historical estimates. Thus, being able to use new tools to identify, count and monitor individuals in this recovering population is a great development, especially in remote and hard to reach areas.
Source: Fretwell et al. (2014).
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have also been studied in the Foxe Basin, in Nunavut and Quebec, Canada (LaRue et al., 2015). Researchers used high-resolution satellite imagery in an attempt to identify and count the bears, but spectral signature differences between bears and other objects were insufficient to yield useful results. Therefore, researchers developed an automated image differencing, also known as change detection, that identifies differences between remotely sensed images collected at different times and “subtract of one image from another”. This method correctly identified nearly 90% of the bears. The technique also generated false positives, but this problem can be corrected by a manual review.
Figure 05 shows the difference in resolution of two types of satellite imagery, the panchromatic (0.6 m resolution) and the multispectral (2.4 m resolution). LaRue et al. (2015)decided not to use the multispectral imagery due to resolution constraints.
Source: LaRue et al. (2015).
A more recent study is being conducted by my fellow OSU Fisheries and Wildlife graduate student, Jane Dolliveron breeding colonies of three species of North Pacific albatrosses (Phoebastria immutabilis, Phoebastria nigripes, and Phoebastria albatrus)(Dolliver et al., 2017). Jane is using high-resolution multispectral satellite imagery (DigitalGlobe WorldView-2 and -3) and image processing techniques to enumerate the albatrosses. They are also using albatross species at multiple reference colonies in Hawaii and Japan (Fig. 06) to determine species identification accuracy and required correction factor(s). This will allow scientists to accurately count unknown populations on the Senkakus, which are uninhabited islands controlled by Japan in the East China Sea.
Source: Satellite image provided by Jane Dolliver.
Using satellite imagery to count seals, penguins, whales, bears and albatrosses is just the start of this rapidly advancing technology. Techniques and resolutions are continuously improving. Methods can also be applied to many other endangered species, especially in remote areas, providing data on presence, abundance, annual productivity, population estimates and trends, changes in distribution, and breeding ground usage.
Other than directly monitoring wildlife, satellite images can also provide information on the environmental variables that can be related to wildlife presence, abundance, productivity and distribution.
Gentemann et al. (2017), for example, used satellite data from NASA to analyze SST variations along the west coast of the United States from 2002 to 2016. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory produces global, daily, 1 km, multiscale ultra-high resolution, motion-compensated analysis of SST, and incorporates SSTs from eight different satellites. Researchers were able to identify warmer than usual SSTs (also called anomalies) along the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts from January 2014 to August 2016 (Fig.07) relative to previous years. This marine heat wave started in the Gulf of Alaska and ended in Southern California, where SST reached a maximum temperature anomaly of 6.2°C, causing major disturbances and substantial economic impacts.
Source: Gentemann et al. (2017).
Changes in SST and winds may alter events such as the coastal upwelling that supplies nutrients to sustain a whole food chain. A marine heat-wave event as described by Gentemann et al. (2017)could have significant impacts on the health of the marine ecosystem in the subsequent season (Gentemann et al., 2017).
These findings may even relate to our questions regarding the poor gray whale body condition we noticed in 2017: this marine heat wave that lasted until August 2016 along the US west coast could have impacted the ecosystem in the subsequent season. However, I must conduct a more detailed study to determine if this heat wave was related or if another oceanographic process was involved.
So, whether remotely sensed data is generated by satellites, drones, thermal imagery, robots (as I previously wrote about), or another type of technology, it can have important and informative applications to monitor wildlife or environmental variables associated with their ecology and biology. We can take advantage of remotely sensed technology to aid wildlife conservation efforts.
References
Dolliver, J., et al., Multispectral processing of high resolution satellite imagery to determine the abundance of nesting albatross. Ecological Society of America, Portland, OR, United States., 2017.
Fretwell, P. T., et al., 2014. Whales from Space: Counting Southern Right Whales by Satellite. Plos One. 9,e88655.
Gentemann, C. L., et al., 2017. Satellite sea surface temperatures along the West Coast of the United States during the 2014–2016 northeast Pacific marine heat wave. Geophysical Research Letters. 44,312-319.
LaRue, M. A., et al., 2014. A method for estimating colony sizes of Adélie penguins using remote sensing imagery. Polar Biology. 37,507-517.
LaRue, M. A., et al., 2011. Satellite imagery can be used to detect variation in abundance of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) in Erebus Bay, Antarctica. Polar Biology. 34,1727–1737.
LaRue, M. A., et al., 2015. Testing Methods for Using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery to Monitor Polar Bear Abundance and Distribution. Wildlife Society Bulletin. 39,772-779.