IDBR: A Cell-Phone Based Wildlife Monitoring System

IDBR：基于手机的野生动物监测系统

• 批准号: 0964254
• 负责人: Bernie Tershy
• 金额: $ 38.14万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-04-01 至 2013-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0964254&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IDBR; Cell; Phone; Based; Wildlife

Seabirds are important marine predators that consume about 7% of marine primary productivity and are a key link between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Seabirds are also the most endangered group of marine species, composing 25% recent marine extinctions and 27% of threatened species.Seabirds disperse over thousands of kilometers of ocean to forage, but concentrate on islands to breed, often at extremely high densities. It is on these breeding islands where they encounter invasive animals and other threats that are the major causes of extinction and endangerment. Fortunately, seabirds can be protected by such measures as invasive species eradications, establishment and effective management of protected areas, or prohibitions against overexploitation. Thus, there is a very real potential to reverse the tide of seabird endangerment and population declines and restore their functional role to thousands of island ecosystems and adjacent waters. One significant impediment to realizing this conservation goal is the high cost and difficulty of measuring seabird population responses to management actions on isolated breeding islands. Monitoring seabird populations is made difficult by three factors: 1) the cost of deploying and maintaining survey teams on remote islands, 2) the ability of teams to regularly arrange travel to remote sites, and 3) the disturbance that survey teams can cause while working in seabird colonies. A collaboration between ecologists at the University of California-Santa Cruz Coastal Conservation Action Lab and computer scientists at Lorax Analytical will develop easy-to-use, low-cost automated acoustic sensors for monitoring changes in seabird populations breeding on islands that can dramatically improve seabird monitoring and drive more effective conservation actions. The collaboration will lead to novel contributions in both fields. The instrument will lead to innovations in sensor design and networking software. It will also greatly expand the geographic and temporal scale at which biologists can conduct research on ecological communities in remote locations. Expected Outcomes: By providing a low-cost, long-term, and minimally invasive tool for monitoring seabirds on islands, the instrument will provide data that was previously unattainable with traditional methods. This will greatly enhance research on seabird ecology, invasive species, and conservation biology. UCSC's Coastal Conservation Action Lab will immediately begin to deploy the system in ongoing seabird monitoring projects around the world. Other uses include wildlife monitoring, research in behavioral ecology, measurements of conservation effectiveness, and documenting soundscapes at Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, and monitoring ecological changes related to climate change.Outreach: This instrument will find wide application with end-users in a variety of research fields. The researchers will present papers introducing the instrument and its application to end users at 2-3 relevant conferences in ecology and computer science,and initiate collaborations to further seabird research with potential end users including state and federal wildlife managers, restoration ecologists, conservation organizations, and citizen scientists. The software developed as part of this project will be released as open source at the end of the project. The source code, documentation, and user manual will be available to end users through a project website at the Coastal Conservation Action Lab http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/croll/WAM/ , allowing biologists and managers to build and tailor the system to fit their needs.

海鸟是重要的海洋捕食者，消耗了约7%的海洋初级生产力，是海洋和陆地生态系统之间的关键纽带。海鸟也是最濒危的海洋物种，占最近海洋灭绝物种的25%和受威胁物种的27%。海鸟分散在数千公里的海洋中觅食，但集中在岛屿上繁殖，通常密度极高。正是在这些繁殖岛上，它们遇到了入侵动物和其他威胁，这是灭绝和濒危的主要原因。幸运的是，海鸟可以通过根除入侵物种、建立和有效管理保护区或禁止过度捕捞等措施得到保护。因此，非常有可能扭转海鸟濒危和数量下降的趋势，并恢复它们对数千个岛屿生态系统和邻近水域的功能作用。实现这一保护目标的一个重要障碍是在孤立的繁殖岛屿上测量海鸟种群对管理行动的反应的高成本和困难。监测海鸟数量的困难在于三个因素：1)在偏远岛屿部署和维持调查队的成本；2)调查队定期安排前往偏远地点的能力；3)调查队在海鸟栖息地工作时可能造成的干扰。加州大学圣克鲁斯海岸保护行动实验室的生态学家和Lorax Analytical公司的计算机科学家将合作开发一种易于使用、低成本的自动化声学传感器，用于监测岛屿上海鸟种群繁殖的变化，这种传感器可以极大地改善海鸟的监测，并推动更有效的保护行动。这种合作将在这两个领域产生新的贡献。该仪器将引领传感器设计和网络软件的创新。它还将极大地扩大地理和时间尺度，使生物学家能够对偏远地区的生态群落进行研究。预期结果：通过提供一种低成本、长期和微创的监测岛屿海鸟的工具，该仪器将提供以前用传统方法无法获得的数据。这将极大地促进海鸟生态学、入侵物种和保护生物学的研究。UCSC的海岸保护行动实验室将立即开始在世界各地正在进行的海鸟监测项目中部署该系统。其他用途包括野生动物监测、行为生态学研究、保护效果测量、记录长期生态研究（LTER）地点的声景，以及监测与气候变化有关的生态变化。外延：该仪器将广泛应用于各种研究领域的最终用户。研究人员将在生态学和计算机科学的2-3个相关会议上向最终用户介绍该仪器及其应用，并与潜在的最终用户（包括州和联邦野生动物管理人员、恢复生态学家、保护组织和公民科学家）开展进一步的海鸟研究合作。作为该项目的一部分开发的软件将在项目结束时作为开源发布。最终用户可以通过海岸保护行动实验室http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/croll/WAM/的项目网站获得源代码、文档和用户手册，生物学家和管理人员可以根据自己的需要构建和定制该系统。