Counting the number of endangered wildlife has been difficult to do. However, scientists discovered a new way by counting them from space with satellite cameras. The count on the number of elephants shows promising results.
A tunnel built in Kenya, Africa to help wild elephants keep crossing the road without breaking their travel lines. Photo taken in January 2014.
The research is entitled “Using Ultra High Resolution Satellite Imagery and Deep Learning to Detect and Count African Elephants in Heterogeneous Landscapes”. The research is published in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation which is also published by Science Daily, January 19, 2021.
The research was conducted by Isla Duporge and David W Macdonald from the University of Oxford, England; Olga Isupova from the University of Bath, UK; and Tiejun Wang from the University of Twente, Netherlands.
In the journal, Isla Duporge and her colleagues write, reliable, accurate and up-to-date wildlife data are essential for monitoring population fluctuations and identifying causes of decline. Satellite remote sensing has recently emerged as a viable new monitoring technique for detecting wildlife.
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“Accurate monitoring is essential if we are to save species. We need to know where the animals are and how many there are, “Olga Isupova was quoted as saying Science Daily.
Artist’s depiction of the Ogo-1 Satellite as it orbits. This satellite has now fallen back to earth.
Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa was chosen as the research site. This provides a spectrally complex heterogeneous background with a high concentration of elephants.
“Our results show, for the first time, that automatic detection of African elephants in very high resolution satellite images can be done against a heterogeneous and homogeneous background. We have automatically detected elephants with accuracy as high as human detection capabilities, ”wrote Isla Uporge and her colleagues.
In addition, the results of the study indicate that generalized detection of elephant populations outside the study site can be carried out. The calf is detected accurately.
Automatic detection of African elephants in very high resolution satellite images can be done against a heterogeneous and homogeneous background.
Elephants were chosen as objects of counting because of their large bodies. However, Olga Isupova hopes to soon be able to detect species that are much smaller than outer space.
“The resolution of satellite imagery increases every few years, and with each increase we’ll be able to see smaller things in more detail,” he said.
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