Detection, differentiation, and abundance estimation of penguin species by high-resolution satellite imagery

Abstract

Due to its high spatial resolution, broad spatial coverage, and cost-eVectiveness, commercial satellite imagery is rapidly becoming a key component of biological monitoring in the Antarctic. While considerable success in surveying emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) has been facilitated by their large size and the visual simplicity of their habitat, there has been considerably less progress in mapping colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula and associated sub-Antarctic islands where smaller penguin species breed on topographically complex terrain composed of mixed substrates. Here, we demonstrate that Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae), chinstrap penguin (P. antarcticus), gentoo penguin (P. papua), and macaroni penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus) colonies can be detected by high-resolution (2-m multispectral, 40-50-cm panchromatic) satellite imagery and that under ideal conditions, such imagery is capable of distinguishing among groups of species where they breed contiguously. To demonstrate the potential for satellite imagery to estimate penguin population abundance, we use satellite imagery of Paulet Island (63°35ЈS, 55°47ЈW) to estimate a site-wide population of 115,673 (99,222-127,203) breeding pairs of Adélie penguins.

Benchmarking of data fusion algorithms in support of earth observation based Antarctic wildlife monitoring

“…Very high spatial resolution (VHSR) satellite sensors like IKONOS, QuickBird, GeoEye, Pléiades, Worldview-2, and Worldview-3 provide very high resolution multi-spectral imagery that can capture the detail needed for an array of applications, e.g. individual houses on a city street, individual animals standing on the ground, or individual tree canopies within a forest stand (Ardila et al, 2012;Kurtz et al, 2012;Lynch et al, 2012;Beguet et al, 2014;Huang et al, 2014;Karlson et al, 2014). Due to shorter revisit times of these sensors, it is also possible to acquire near real-time imagery over the area of interest (Kim et al, 2011).…”

A small unmanned aerial system for estimating abundance and size of Antarctic predators

“…However, polar research sites present challenges to traditional aerial techniques. While technological progress has been made in using satellite imagery to census some populations (LaRue et al 2011;Lynch et al 2012;Fretwell et al 2012;McMahon et al 2014;Lynch and LaRue 2014) and reveal large-scale spatial distributions of others (Fretwell and Trathan 2009), methodological challenges remain for providing accurate counts of smaller animals, such as seabirds (Barber-Meyer et al 2007;Lynch et al 2012). Moreover, many areas of interest (e.g., maritime Antarctica) have a high degree of cloud cover throughout the year that greatly reduces the utility of satellite-based methods to provide images at ideal census times (e.g., peak egg laying for breeding population census among penguins; see also LaRue et al (2011) and Fretwell et al (2012) for discussion of resolution and cloud cover).…”

Mapping of Polar Areas Based on High-Resolution Satellite Images: The Example of the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station

“…In some regions sufficiently high-resolution DTMs are currently lacking (for example the South Sandwich Islands). In this and other cases, VHRS satellite images are not orthorectified (Lynch et al, 2012).…”