Drones and artificial intelligence show promise for conservation of
farmland bird nests

Date:
July 14, 2020
Source:
University of Helsinki
Summary:
Every spring, a large number of ground-nests of farmland birds
are accidentally destroyed by mechanical operations, such as
ploughing and sowing. A new study shows for the first time that
such nests can be located using a drone in combination with
artificial intelligence.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Farmland bird species are declining over most of Europe. Birds breeding
on the ground, are particularly vulnerable because they are exposed to mechanical operations, like ploughing and sowing, which take place in
spring and often accidentally destroy nests.


========================================================================== Locating nests on the ground is challenging for the human eye, and highly
time- consuming Researchers flew a drone carrying a thermal camera over agricultural fields to record images. These were then fed to an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of accurately identifying nests, a first
step to aid their protection.

Researchers tested the system in Southern Finland near University of
Helsinki's Lammi Biological Station, using wild nests with eggs of the
Lapwing Vanellus vanellus.

"We have been involved in conservation of ground-nesting farmland
birds for years, and realized how difficult it is to locate nests on
the ground. At least at high latitudes, the temperature of these nests
is typically higher than that of the surrounding environment. Hence,
we thought that thermal cameras could assist. A small pilot study
indicated that thermal vision is hampered by vegetation and objects on
the ground. Therefore to make this an efficient system, we thought that
the camera could be flown using a drone, and artificial intelligence
could help to analyse the resulting thermal images. We show that
this works. However, the system performed best under cloudy and cold conditions, and on even grounds," says Andrea Santangeli, an Academy
of Finland fellow at the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus,
University of Helsinki.

Drone technology becoming rapidly popular in conservation It is possible
to map in near real-time the spread of diseases on crops in agricultural
areas using drones with various sensors. The latter is an integral part of precision agriculture, a new way of crop production that makes large use
of drone technology to monitor crops and maximize production efficiency.

Studies like this one can help pave the way to integrate bird nest
detection within the drone borne sensors used in precision agriculture,
and automate a system for saving those nests.

"The conservation community must be ready to embrace technology and work
across disciplines and sectors in order to seek efficient solutions. This
is already happening, with drone technology becoming rapidly popular
in conservation. A next and most challenging step will be to test our
system in different environments and with different species. Our auspice
is that this system will be, one day, fully integrated into agricultural practices, so that detecting and saving nests from mechanical destruction
will become a fully automated part of food production," says Andrea
Santangeli.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Helsinki. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Andrea Santangeli, Yuxuan Chen, Edward Kluen, Raviteja Chirumamilla,
Juha
Tiainen, John Loehr. Integrating drone-borne thermal imaging with
artificial intelligence to locate bird nests on agricultural land.

Scientific Reports, 2020; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67898-3 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200714101240.htm

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