BioCam - Mapping of Benthic Biology, Geology and Ecology with Essential Ocean Variables

BioCam - 利用基本海洋变量绘制底栖生物学、地质学和生态学

• 批准号: NE/P020887/1
• 负责人: Blair Thornton
• 金额: $ 74.87万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FP020887%2F1
• 关键词: BioCam; Mapping; Benthic; Biology; Geology

The UK and international governments need to understand the effects of human activities on deep-sea ecosystems in order to make well informed decisions on how to protect and preserve them for future generations. In particular, deep-water coral reefs can be thought of a hotspot for biological activity, providing a rich habitat for diverse communities of marine life at depths of up to ~2000 m. At the same time deep-sea corals grow slowly, taking several thousands of years to form these reefs, are fragile and extremely sensitive to changes in the environment. As such, failure to protect them from trawling and industrial activities may have irreversible effects not only on the distribution of coral, but also on the distribution of the marine communities they support. However, monitoring of live coral distribution is expensive and time consuming. The main reason for this is that while deep-water corals are sparsely distributed over areas the size of a large city, the features that need to be observed to identify them reliably are on the scale of centimetres. Furthermore, colour is often used to tell apart healthy live coral from dead coral, which means that direct visual observation using underwater cameras is often necessary. Unfortunately, taking images underwater requires vehicles equipped with cameras and powerful lighting systems to operate within one or two meters of the seafloor. Since vehicles operating this close to the seafloor need to avoid obstacles, they can only travel at about a fifth of the speed people walk. In addition to these limitations, while an image can tell us if live coral is present or not, more advanced 3D imaging methods are needed to also tell us how much coral there is, which is important to know when monitoring changes in their abundance.In this project, we will develop a 3D underwater camera system that is capable of measuring the distribution of live coral on the seafloor over areas that are more than 50 times larger than is currently possible. The system will use a pair of highly sensitivity cameras, a powerful flashed lighting system and a pulsed laser to obtain full colour images and high resolution 3D shape information at a range of almost 10 m (~5 times higher than is typical) from the seafloor. Being able to take high-resolution images from further away will increase the area that can be observed in a single frame and also allow underwater vehicles to operate at safer altitudes and so travel significantly faster than previously possible. Furthermore, images obtained by the 3D camera system will be processed to generate large 3D image landscapes that cover areas of several hundreds of hectares (1 hectare = 10,000m2). These landscapes will each consist of several hundreds of thousands of images of the seafloor obtained over several days using an underwater vehicle. The landscapes will provide scientists with a rich, explorable computer generated reconstruction of deep-sea environments that they can use to visualise and study patterns in the distribution of live coral that would not be immediately obvious in a folder consisting of several hundreds of thousands of raw image frames. Furthermore, the reconstructions will be made compatible with existing web-based interfaces that will potentially allow scientists from all over the world to directly identify live coral and make measurements of their size and distribution over the internet. The technology developed in this project will allow live coral distributions to be studied over spatial scales that were not previously possible. By revisiting sites over several years, the high-resolution data obtained by the proposed sensor will help facilitate a better understand of the changes that take place on the seafloor, and allow our governments to make better informed decisions regarding the best strategies to preserve and protect these habitats without unnecessarily compromising commercial and industrial activities in the ocean.

英国和国际政府需要了解人类活动对深海生态系统的影响，以便就如何保护和保护它们为子孙后代做出明智的决定。特别是，可以想到一个用于生物活动的热点，为海洋生物的各种社区提供了一个丰富的栖息地，最多约2000 m。同时，深海珊瑚生长缓慢，需要数千年来形成这些珊瑚礁，对环境变化非常敏感。因此，不保护他们免受拖网和工业活动的影响，不仅对珊瑚的分布产生不可逆转的影响，而且对他们支持的海洋社区的分布也可能产生不可逆转的影响。但是，对实时珊瑚分布的监控是昂贵且耗时的。这样做的主要原因是，虽然深水珊瑚在大城市的大小上稀疏分布，但需要观察到的特征可靠地识别出它们的规模。此外，颜色通常用于将健康的活珊瑚与死珊瑚分开，这意味着通常需要使用水下摄像头直接观察视觉观察。不幸的是，在水下拍摄图像需要配备摄像头和强大照明系统的车辆才能在海底一两米内运行。由于在海底附近运行的车辆需要避免障碍，因此他们只能以大约五分之一的人行走。除了这些限制外，虽然图像可以告诉我们是否存在实时珊瑚，但需要更高级的3D成像方法来告诉我们有多少珊瑚，这很重要，在监视其丰度的监控时，我们将开发一个3D下水下摄像机系统，该系统能够超过50次，该系统能够衡量超过50倍的现场珊瑚的分布，而不是50次。该系统将使用一对高度灵敏度摄像机，强大的闪光照明系统和脉冲激光器来获取全彩色图像和高分辨率3D形状信息，范围为近10 m（比典型的高度约5倍）。能够从更远的地方拍摄高分辨率图像将增加可以在单个框架中观察到的区域，还可以使水下车辆以更安全的海拔高度运行，因此旅行速度明显比以前更快。此外，将处理3D摄像头系统获得的图像，以生成覆盖数百公顷（1公顷= 10,000m2）的面积的大型3D图像景观。这些景观将包括几天使用水下车辆在几天内获得的数十万个海底图像组成。这些景观将为科学家提供丰富的，可探索的计算机生成的深海环境重建，它们可以用来可视化和研究实时珊瑚分布中的模式，而在由数千千种原始图像框架组成的文件夹中，这并不是很明显的。此外，重建将与现有的基于Web的接口兼容，这些接口有可能允许来自世界各地的科学家直接识别实时珊瑚，并通过Internet对其大小和分布进行测量。该项目中开发的技术将使实时珊瑚分布可以通过以前无法实现的空间尺度进行研究。通过重新访问几年的网站，提议的传感器获得的高分辨率数据将有助于更好地了解海底上发生的变化，并允许我们的政府做出有关保存和保护这些栖息地的最佳策略，而无需不必要地保护这些栖息地的最佳策略。

项目成果

Improving coral monitoring by reducing variability and bias in cover estimates from seabed images

通过减少海底图像覆盖估计的变异性和偏差来改善珊瑚监测

• DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2024.103214
• 发表时间: 2024
• 期刊: Progress in Oceanography
• 影响因子: 4.1
• 作者: Curtis E

Auto-calibration of line-laser structured-light seafloor mapping systems

线激光结构光海底测绘系统的自动校准

• DOI: 10.23919/oceans44145.2021.9705873
• 发表时间: 2021
• 作者: Stanley D

Analysis of measurement uncertainty in high-resolution laser-scanned bathymetric measurements of seafloor topology using an autonomous underwater vehicle

使用自主水下航行器对海底拓扑进行高分辨率激光扫描测深测量的测量不确定度分析

• 发表时间: 2018
• 作者: Leat M

Laser Stripe Bathymetry using Particle Filter SLAM

• DOI: 10.1109/oceanse.2019.8867106
• 发表时间: 2019-06
• 期刊: OCEANS 2019 - Marseille
• 作者: M. Massot-Campos;Gabriel Oliver-Codina;B. Thornton

2020 RRS Discovery Cruise DY108-109, 6 Sept - 2 Oct 2019. CLASS - Climate-linked Atlantic System Science Darwin Mounds Marine Protected Area habitat monitoring, BioCAM - first equipment trials. BLT- Recipes: pilot study (National Oceanography Centre Cruise Report, 66) Southampton. National Oceanography Centre

2020 RRS Discovery Cruise DY108-109，2019 年 9 月 6 日至 10 月 2 日。课程 - 与气候相关的大西洋系统科学达尔文土墩海洋保护区栖息地监测，BioCAM - 首次设备试验。

• 发表时间: 2020
• 作者: Huvenne V