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Image Recognition in Wildlife Applications

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Machine Learning for Ecology and Sustainable Natural Resource Management

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Abstract

Digital camera equipment, data storage and image processing capacity have become cheaper and more accessible to ecologists. Camera trap stations, with the images delivered to our inboxes, are widely available (O’Connell AF, Nichols JD, Ullas Karanth K Camera traps in animal ecology: methods and analyses. Book, Whole. Springer Science & Business Media, 2010). Ecologists and wildlife biologists are also deploying camera and videography equipment as a standard back up to traditional census techniques, such as observer counts of wildlife along transects. Drones can deliver high quality and detailed images of animals; for examples NOAA’s recent release of Killer Whales collected images by drones (Fig. 14.1). The amount of collected images can quickly outpace our ability to analyze this data by hand. Can machine learning applications help ecologists and wildlife biologists leverage the information contained in these images?

In this chapter, I review some broad applications and uses of imagery for ecologists and wildlife biologists. Images can be used to (1) identify species for occurrence, (2) identify individuals for mark-recapture studies and other behavioral studies, and (3) count individual animals for population census. Machine learning can help us effectively process and extract information from images and in some cases; the methods are becoming more available to biologists without computer programming skills.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Soldotna, AK, USA

    Dawn R. Magness

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  1. Dawn R. Magness
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Correspondence to Dawn R. Magness .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Black Bawks Data Science Ltd, Fort Augustus, Scotland, New Zealand

    Grant Humphries

  2. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Soldotna, AK, USA

    Dawn R. Magness

  3. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska - Fairbanks, FAIRBANKS, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Magness, D.R. (2018). Image Recognition in Wildlife Applications. In: Humphries, G., Magness, D., Huettmann, F. (eds) Machine Learning for Ecology and Sustainable Natural Resource Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96978-7_14

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