Drone Monitoring of Breeding Waterbird Populations: The Case of the Glossy Ibis

Isabel Afán,Ricardo Díaz-Delgado,Manuel Máñez

doi:10.3390/drones2040042

Abstract

Waterbird communities are potential indicators of ecological changes in threatened wetland ecosystems and consequently, a potential object of ecological monitoring programs. Waterbirds often breed in largely inaccessible colonies in flooded habitats, so unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveys provide a robust method for estimating their breeding population size. Counts of breeding pairs might be carried out by manual and automated detection routines. In this study we surveyed the main breeding colony of Glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) at the Doñana National Park. We obtained a high resolution image, in which the number and location of nests were determined manually through visual interpretation by an expert. We also suggest a standardized methodology for nest counts that would be repeatable across time for long-term monitoring censuses, through a supervised classification based primarily on the spectral properties of the image and a subsequent automatic size and form based count. Although manual and automatic count were largely similar in the total number of nests, accuracy between both methodologies was only 46.37%, with higher variability in shallow areas free of emergent vegetation than in areas dominated by tall macrophytes. We discuss the potential challenges for automatic counts in highly complex images.

Highlights

Ecological monitoring programs are fundamentally important for maintaining long-term series of data to evaluate the impact of anthropogenic activities and global change on protected areas [1,2,3].Most conservation policies and management decisions rely primarily on information from monitoring programmes that focus on the ecosystem structures and processes and biodiversity variables as species populations [4,5,6]
The orthomosaic obtained from the aerial survey showed an area of 16 ha covering the complete surface of the Lucio de la FAO where Glossy ibis breeds (Figure 4)
The Glossy ibis colony was based in a continuous area of 3.2 ha with two major classes of vegetation cover: flooded areas covered by macrophytes and free areas of emergent vegetation but covered with aquatic plants (Lemna spp)

Summary

Introduction

Ecological monitoring programs are fundamentally important for maintaining long-term series of data to evaluate the impact of anthropogenic activities and global change on protected areas [1,2,3].Most conservation policies and management decisions rely primarily on information from monitoring programmes that focus on the ecosystem structures and processes and biodiversity variables as species populations [4,5,6]. One of the main goals of population monitoring programs is the study of species distribution changes over time. In this regard, it is crucial to develop consistent methods to monitor species distribution and abundance that will allow us to assess measures of population fluctuations [7]. As most species of waterbirds breed in largely inaccessible colonies within flooded habitats, it is difficult to carry out surveys of colonial wetland birds in situ. Many of these bird species breed densely aggregated in inaccessible places with no possibility of performing ground surveys without causing serious disturbances to the breeding individuals [10].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion