Tech makes satellite images increasingly attractive for wildlife research
News Highlights: Tech makes satellite images increasingly attractive for wildlife research
An interdisciplinary team of zoologists and conservationists from the University of Oxford and the University of Bath have used machine learning to identify African elephants in high-resolution satellite images.
Satellite imagery does not yet have enough resolution to compete with more traditional ground-based methods, such as Save the Elephants’ approach to oblique camera counts.
Satellite surveys still offer many benefits, such as being unobtrusive to wildlife and the ability to survey inaccessible areas.
As satellite imagery and machine learning continue to improve, satellite exploration can become an increasingly useful tool for conservationists.
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Elephants Counted from Space with Algorithms and Satellite Cameras
For the first time, scientists have successfully used satellite cameras coupled with deep learning to count animals in complex geographical landscapes, taking conservationists an important step forward in monitoring populations of endangered species. Elephants in woodland as seen from space. Green rectangles show elephants detected by the algorithm, red rectangles show elephants verified by humans.
Credit: University of Bath
For this research, the satellite Worldview 3 used high-resolution imagery to capture African elephants moving through forests and grasslands. The automated system detected animals with the same accuracy as humans are able to achieve.