Spotting cows from space universityofcalifornia.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from universityofcalifornia.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Watching cows from space
Cows from above. Credit:
Umkehrer / Getty Images.
When looking down upon the Earth through the eyes of a satellite, what would you choose to look at? For students at the University of California Santa Barbara, they watched cows from space.
In a recent paper published in
Biological Conservation, a team of students, along with ecologist Doug McCauley, scrutinised satellite images of cattle herds around Point Reyes National Seashore, USA, to track how wildlife and livestock interact.
Their rigorous cow spotting showed that wild elk had learned to avoid cattle in the area, choosing different places to forage in order to coexist.
Environmental News Network - Spotting Cows From Space enn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from enn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Courtesy image
Cows don’t seem to have a whole lot going on most of the time. They’re raised to spend their days grazing in the field, raised for the purpose of providing milk or meat, or producing more cows. So when students in UC Santa Barbara ecologist Doug McCauley’s lab found themselves staring intently at satellite image upon image of bovine herds at Point Reyes National Seashore, it was funny, in a “Far Side” kind of way.
“There were about 10 undergrads involved in the project, spotting cows from space not your typical student research and always amusing to see in the lab,” McCauley said. They became proficient at discerning the top view of a cow from the top view of rocks or the top view of other animals, he added.
Researchers use satellite imagery to track interactions between cows and elk at interface of wildland and rangeland miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.