Application of remote sensing technologies to assess responses of a boreal keystone species to variability in food and structural cover

遥感技术直到最近才以足够精细的规模和具有成本效益的价格提供，以便将生物环境的变化与动物生态和种群动态联系起来。需要所需的基础设施（无人机，激光雷达，RGB和多光谱相机）来支持D. Murray （TrentU）和S. Boutin （UAlberta）在育空Kluane湖对雪鞋兔和北方生态系统动态的长期研究。野兔表现出戏剧性的10年人口周期，回荡在北方森林生态系统中。野兔在很大程度上受灌木和树木的影响，它们提供食物和躲避捕食者的结构掩护；这些资源的时空变化可能对种群生态学和北方生态系统动力学产生影响。多光谱图像将用于记录植物的光谱特性，以推断物种特异性物候，生产力和生长。结合激光雷达和RGB图像将产生全彩色的三维点云，用于对植被结构（即覆盖度）进行可靠的评估。我们的无人机是为具有挑战性的工业应用而设计的，将在我们的6个永久性研究区域（每个36公顷）上空飞行，全年和高频率（每年约20次飞行），提供精细的年际和季节性食物/覆盖资源评估，包括在冬季积雪影响资源可用性时。这种遥感采样的强度在生态学中是前所未有的，只有在我们偏远的育空地区野外站永久安置设备才能实现。遥感调查将与正在进行的野兔及其主要捕食者（加拿大猞猁）的GPS遥测和加速度计的深入研究相结合，以揭示野兔食物/覆盖物的动态变化如何影响野兔行为和运动的变化。此外，拟议的基础设施将有助于阐明风险规避和死亡率的模式是否符合食物/覆盖的空间或时间变化。由于在我们的研究区域，仪器测量的猞猁在空间上与野兔重叠，因此该设备将提供前所未有的见解，了解森林结构和物候的变化如何影响捕食者的行为、栖息地选择和狩猎策略。从长远来看，这项研究还将有助于阐明气候变化是否正在改变北方森林植物资源的结构和功能，以及这种变化是否有助于生态系统水平的变化，如草食动物及其捕食者的循环动力学衰减。该基础设施将用于培养仪器操作和产品分析方面的高素质人才（HQP），这将大大提高他们的市场竞争力和就业轨迹。

Remote sensing technologies have only recently become available at a sufficiently fine scale and cost-efficient pricing to relate variation in the biotic environment to animal ecology and population dynamics. The requested infrastructure (unmanned aerial vehicle (i.e., drone), LiDAR, RGB and multispectral cameras) is needed to support D. Murray (TrentU) and S. Boutin (UAlberta) in their long-term research on snowshoe hares and boreal ecosystem dynamics at Kluane Lake, Yukon. Hares exhibit dramatic 10-year population cycles that reverberate through the boreal forest ecosystem. Hares are importantly influenced by shrubs and trees, which offer food and structural cover from predation; spatio-temporal variation in these resources likely impacts hare population ecology and boreal ecosystem dynamics. Multispectral imagery will be used to document spectral properties of plants, to infer species-specific phenology, productivity, and growth. Combined LiDAR and RGB imagery will produce full colour, three-dimensional point clouds for robust assessment of vegetation structure (i.e., cover). Our UAV is designed for challenging industrial applications and will be flown over our 6 permanent hare study areas (36 ha each), year-round and at a high frequency (~20X flights per year), to provide fine-scale inter-annual and seasonal assessment of food/cover resources, including during winter when snowcover affects resource availability. This intensity of remote sensing sampling is unprecedented in ecology and is only achievable by permanently housing the equipment at our remote Yukon field station. Remote sensing surveys will be conducted in tandem with ongoing and intensive research involving GPS telemetry and accelerometry of hares and their main predators (Canada lynx), to reveal how dynamic changes in hare food/cover affect shifts in hare behaviour and movements. Further, the proposed infrastructure will serve to elucidate whether patterns of hare risk avoidance and mortality conform to spatial or temporal shifts in food/cover. Because instrumented lynx overlap spatially with hares on our study areas, the equipment will provide unprecedented insight into how variation in forest structure and phenology can trickle up' to shape predator behaviour, habitat selection and hunting strategy. Over a longer term, this research will also help elucidate whether climate change is altering the structure and function of plant resources in the boreal forest, and whether such variation contributes to ecosystem-level changes like attenuation of cyclic dynamics in herbivores and their predators. The infrastructure will serve to train high quality personnel (HQP) in instrument operation and product analysis, which will dramatically improve their marketability and employment trajectory.