IDBR: A Cell-Phone Based Wildlife Monitoring System

海鸟是重要的海洋捕食者，消耗约7%的海洋初级生产力，是连接海洋和陆地生态系统的关键纽带。海鸟也是最濒危的海洋物种，占最近海洋灭绝的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。正是在这些繁衍生息的岛屿上，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，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来保护海鸟。因此，有非常实际的潜力扭转海鸟濒危和种群减少的趋势，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，衡量海鸟种群对孤立繁殖岛屿上的管理行动的反应的成本和难度很高。由于三个因素，监测海鸟种群变得困难：1)在偏远岛屿部署和维护调查小组的成本，2)小组定期安排前往偏远地点旅行的能力，以及3)调查小组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的计算机科学家将合作开发易于使用、低成本的自动化声学传感器，用于监测在岛屿上繁殖的海鸟种群的变化，这可以显著改善对海鸟的监测，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。该仪器将导致传感器设计和网络软件的创新。它还将极大地扩大生物学家可以对偏远地区的生态群落进行研究的地理和时间尺度。预期结果：通过提供一种低成本、长期和微创的工具来监测岛屿上的海鸟，该仪器将提供以前用传统方法无法获得的数据。这将大大加强对海鸟生态、入侵物种和保护生物学的研究。加州大学洛杉矶分校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、保护有效性的测量、记录长期生态研究(LTER)地点的声音景观，以及监测与气候变化有关的生态变化。研究人员将在2-3个生态学和计算机科学的相关会议上向最终用户介绍该仪器及其应用的论文，并启动与潜在最终用户的合作，以进一步开展海鸟研究，这些最终用户包括州和联邦野生动物管理者、恢复生态学家、保护组织和公民科学家。作为该项目的一部分开发的软件将在项目结束时作为开放源码发布。源代码、文档和用户手册将通过海岸保护行动实验室http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/croll/WAM/的项目网站提供给最终用户，允许生物学家和管理人员构建和定制系统以满足他们的需求。

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.