A Camera Trap to Reveal the Obscure World of the Arctic Subnivean Ecology

Abstract

Subnivean life is an important part of the Arctic ecosystem but it has been little explored. Long, harsh winters in addition to remoteness have made direct studies in these hardly accessible areas very expensive and extremely difficult. To tackle this problem, a low-power autonomous camera system (called ArcÇav) is developed for monitoring small mammals beneath the snow in the Canadian Arctic. ArcÇav is composed of several components, including a digital camera, a single board computer, a microcontroller board, and a motion detection sensor. A limited energy source, very cold temperatures, darkness, and a very long recording period (several months) are major challenges that ArcÇav is designed to deal with. The performance of the developed system is evaluated in a real situation in the High Arctic. The field results show that ArcÇav can function well for an extended period of time on a battery at very low temperatures during the arctic winters. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that life under snow has been filmed by a camera trap in the Arctic during winter. ArcÇav equips ecologists with a new means to explore and study subnivean life remotely. These observations can provide a foundation to answer some of questions that have puzzled animal ecologists for decades.