Application of Thermal and Ultraviolet Sensors in Remote Sensing of Upland Ducks

Detection, mapping, and monitoring of wildlife populations can provide significant insight into the health and trajectory of the ecosystems they rely on. In fact, it was not until recently that the benefits of wetland ecosystems were fully understood. Unfortunately, by that point, the United States had removed more than 50% of its native wetlands. The Prairie Pothole Region in North America is the premier breeding location for ducks; responsible for producing more than 50% of the North American ducks annually. The current survey methods for obtaining duck population counts are accomplished primarily using manned flights with observers manually identifying and counting the ducks below with coordinated ground surveys at a subset of these areas to obtain breeding pair estimates. The current industry standard for in situ assessment of nest locations for reproductive effort estimates is known as the “chain drag method”, a manually intensive ground survey technique. However, recent improvements to small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), coupled with the increased performance of lightweight sensors provide the potential for an alternative survey method. Our objective for this study was to assess the feasibility of utilizing sUAS based thermal longwave infrared (LWIR) imagery for detecting duck nests and ultraviolet (UV) imagery to classify breeding pairs in the Prairie Pothole Region. Our team deployed a DRS Tamarisk 640 LWIR sensor aboard a DJI Matrice 600 hexa-copter at Ducks Unlimited’s Coteau Ranch in Sheridan County, North Dakota, to obtain the thermal imagery. At the ranch, 24 nests were imaged at two altitudes (40m and 80m) during the early morning (04h00-06h00), morning (06h00-08h00), and midday (11h00-13h00). Three main parameters, namely altitude, time of day, and terrain, were varied between flights and the impact that each had on detection accuracy was examined. Each nest image was min-max normalized and contrast enhanced using a high-pass filter, prior to input into the detection algorithm. We determined that the variable with the highest impact on detection accuracies was altitude. We were able to achieve detection accuracies of 58% and 69% for the 80m and 40m flights, respectively. We also determined that flights in the early morning yielded the highest detection accuracies, which was attributed to the increased contrast between the landscape and the nests after the prairie cooled overnight. Additionally, the detection accuracies were lowest during morning flights when the hens might be off the nests on a recess break from incubation. Therefore, we determined that with increases in spatial resolution, the use of sUAS based thermal imagery is feasible for detecting nests across the prairie and that flights should occur early in the morning while the hens are on the nest, in order to maximize detection potential. To assess the feasibility of classifying breeding duck pairs using UV imagery, our team took a preliminary step in simulating UAS reflectance imagery by collecting 260 scans across nine species of upland ducks with a fixed measurement geometry using an OceanOptic’s spectroradiometer. We established baseline accuracies of 83%, 83%, and 76% for classifying age, sex, and species, respectively, by using a random forest (RF) classifier with simulated panchromatic (250-850nm) image sets. When using imagery at narrow UV bands with the same RF classifier, we were able to increase classification accuracies for age and species by 7%. Therefore, we demonstrated the potential for the use of sUAS based imagery as an alternate method for surveying nesting ducks, as well as potential improvements in age and species classification using UV imagery during breeding pair aerial surveys. Next steps should include efforts to extend these findings to airborne sensing systems, toward eventual operational implementation. Such an approach could alleviate environmental impacts associated with in situ surveys, while increasing the scale (scope and exhaustiveness) of surveys

Biomedical and Human Factors Requirements for a Manned Earth Orbiting Station

This report is the result of a study conducted by Republic Aviation Corporation in conjunction with Spacelabs, Inc.,in a team effort in which Republic Aviation Corporation was prime contractor. In order to determine the realistic engineering design requirements associated with the medical and human factors problems of a manned space station, an interdisciplinary team of personnel from the Research and Space Divisions was organized. This team included engineers, physicians, physiologists, psychologists, and physicists. Recognizing that the value of the study is dependent upon medical judgments as well as more quantifiable factors (such as design parameters) a group of highly qualified medical consultants participated in working sessions to determine which medical measurements are required to meet the objectives of the study. In addition, various Life Sciences personnel from NASA (Headquarters, Langley, MSC) participated in monthly review sessions. The organization, team members, consultants, and some of the part-time contributors are shown in Figure 1. This final report embodies contributions from all of these participants

Increasing river discharge in the Eurasian Arctic : consideration of dams, permafrost thaw, and fires as potential agents of change

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): D18102, doi:10.1029/2004JD004583.Discharge from Eurasian rivers to the Arctic Ocean has increased significantly in recent decades, but the reason for this trend remains unclear. Increased net atmospheric moisture transport from lower to higher latitudes in a warming climate has been identified as one potential mechanism. However, uncertainty associated with estimates of precipitation in the Arctic makes it difficult to confirm whether or not this mechanism is responsible for the change in discharge. Three alternative mechanisms are dam construction and operation, permafrost thaw, and increasing forest fires. Here we evaluate the potential influence of these three mechanisms on changes in discharge from the six largest Eurasian Arctic rivers (Yenisey, Ob', Lena, Kolyma, Pechora, and Severnaya Dvina) between 1936 and 1999. Comprehensive discharge records made it possible to evaluate the influence of dams directly. Data on permafrost thaw and fires in the watersheds of the Eurasian Arctic rivers are more limited. We therefore use a combination of data and modeling scenarios to explore the potential of these two mechanisms as drivers of increasing discharge. Dams have dramatically altered the seasonality of discharge but are not responsible for increases in annual values. Both thawing of permafrost and increased fires may have contributed to changes in discharge, but neither can be considered a major driver. Cumulative thaw depths required to produce the observed increases in discharge are unreasonable: Even if all of the water from thawing permafrost were converted to discharge, a minimum of 4 m thawed evenly across the combined permafrost area of the six major Eurasian Arctic watersheds would have been required. Similarly, sensitivity analysis shows that the increases in fires that would have been necessary to drive the changes in discharge are unrealistic. Of the potential drivers considered here, increasing northward transport of moisture as a result of global warming remains the most viable explanation for the observed increases in Eurasian Arctic river discharge.This research was funded by the Arctic System Science Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF-OPP- 0229302)