B-031 - Adélie Penguin colony survey
PI: David Ainley
Project Lead: Keith Williams
Funding Source: NSF-PLR Antarctic
Location: Cape Crozier, Cape Royds, Antarctica
Dates: 2019-01-12 to 2019-01-15
Project Summary
As the pace of global change accelerates, rapid assessment of its impacts on wildlife populations is increasingly important. Understanding how nesting habitat and nest density influence Adélie penguin breeding success is constrained due to a lack of data for large colonies. As with many wildlife populations, counting the number individuals from the ground is not feasible, and a single annual aerial survey to photograph nesting adults has been the only colony-wide data collected. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for conducting ecological surveys has grown exponentially and promises to expand the ease of conducting surveys at large scales. This project will use UAVs to aid in generating high-resolution maps of penguin nests as well as for counting the numbers of nesting birds and chicks. These UAV missions will greatly increase our ability to collect highly accurate data over large scales and increase our ability to track how the populations respond to environmental change.