Space laser spies designed for woodpeckers
US scientists are rising techniques to monitor woodpeckers from space.
An Idaho University team has been with a satellite-borne laser to try to forecast in which part of a State woods the birds strength be living.
The instrument cannot see person woodpeckers or trees, but it can determine the key characteristics of a woodland, like how opaque it is.
Initial work has exposed maps built from such data can locate areas favoured by North American pleated woodpeckers.
The scientists want to know where these birds are for the reason that they are seen as good indicators of overall bird variety in a forest.
"They create homes for lots of other class in the forest setting," explained Dr Kerri Vierling from the university's fish and wildlife section.
"They make cavities and those cavities are then used by other species for nesting and roosting.
"Woodpeckers are very sensitive to forest characteristics, and so they're very selective about where they decide to live."
The Idaho research has been presented here in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.
The team assessed some 20,000 hectares of forest in the northern part of the state around Moscow Mountain. They used data acquired by laser altimeters flown on aircraft and on Nasa's Icesat spacecraft before its recent retirement (it was de-orbited in August(
Ice sat (Nasa) Ice sat will be replaced later this decade
Originally conceived as a means to measure the tallness of ice surfaces in polar regions, the Icesat instrument has also proved enormously effective in gathering information about plants cover in other parts of the globe.
Because the way the beam of glow sent down by the laser bounces back off canopy leaves, tree trunks and the ground, it is possible to make general statements about significant forest characteristics.
Team-member Patrick Adam told BBC News: "We try to gauge the diameter of the trees and their density. We can't do that straight from these instruments, but to get at diameter we can measure the height of the trees because tall trees are fatter than short trees; and we get at the thickness of the forest by looking at the relative amount of light that is returned from the foliage against that which is returned from the ground.
"So by looking at the areas to have the tallest trees, we know that they also have the major trees in diameter, and that there's a better chance of there life form woodpeckers there. We don't just hypothesise that, we go out and we really conduct ground-based woodpecker surveys in these locations as well to confirm it."
Dr Lee Vierling from the university's section of forest ecology and biogeosciences added: "There's one species that needs to have high-density forest. That's the pleated woodpecker.
Pileated woodpeckers (Lee Vierling) Pileated woodpeckers favor a dense stand as they forage for ants
"It's a superb bird with a tall red crest on its head. It's a carpenter-ant foraging species so the denser the forest, the better for that exacting bird."
Past survey's of forest structure have tended to be fairly labour rigorous endeavors, involving sending many people into an area on foot to make the assessment. And while such assessments produce very detailed results, they are necessarily limited in their spatial in order.
Allying distantly sensed data to the ground effort should make territory surveys more relevant over much broader areas of forest.
"If we are able to foresee where woodpeckers are just based on satellite data then we can also surmise, based some other vegetation characteristics, that we strength also have higher variety of forest songbirds or even some mammals and reptiles. That's useful in land management planning and biodiversity planning," said Mr Adam.
"It's a lot easier to use satellite data. It's significant to still to do some ground-truthing at a few select points just to make sure we're not completely going off tangent from reality. But in general, yes, we can cover large areas with the flying lidar, and we're really hopeful with what we can use the space-borne lidar for because that has worldwide coverage, so we could use that at a much better scale."
The Icesat gadget is no longer in space, but it will be replaced later this decade. In totaling, the US space agency is thinking of flying another laser gadget on its Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) assignment.
An Idaho University team has been with a satellite-borne laser to try to forecast in which part of a State woods the birds strength be living.
The instrument cannot see person woodpeckers or trees, but it can determine the key characteristics of a woodland, like how opaque it is.
Initial work has exposed maps built from such data can locate areas favoured by North American pleated woodpeckers.
The scientists want to know where these birds are for the reason that they are seen as good indicators of overall bird variety in a forest.
"They create homes for lots of other class in the forest setting," explained Dr Kerri Vierling from the university's fish and wildlife section.
"They make cavities and those cavities are then used by other species for nesting and roosting.
"Woodpeckers are very sensitive to forest characteristics, and so they're very selective about where they decide to live."
The Idaho research has been presented here in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.
The team assessed some 20,000 hectares of forest in the northern part of the state around Moscow Mountain. They used data acquired by laser altimeters flown on aircraft and on Nasa's Icesat spacecraft before its recent retirement (it was de-orbited in August(
Ice sat (Nasa) Ice sat will be replaced later this decade
Originally conceived as a means to measure the tallness of ice surfaces in polar regions, the Icesat instrument has also proved enormously effective in gathering information about plants cover in other parts of the globe.
Because the way the beam of glow sent down by the laser bounces back off canopy leaves, tree trunks and the ground, it is possible to make general statements about significant forest characteristics.
Team-member Patrick Adam told BBC News: "We try to gauge the diameter of the trees and their density. We can't do that straight from these instruments, but to get at diameter we can measure the height of the trees because tall trees are fatter than short trees; and we get at the thickness of the forest by looking at the relative amount of light that is returned from the foliage against that which is returned from the ground.
"So by looking at the areas to have the tallest trees, we know that they also have the major trees in diameter, and that there's a better chance of there life form woodpeckers there. We don't just hypothesise that, we go out and we really conduct ground-based woodpecker surveys in these locations as well to confirm it."
Dr Lee Vierling from the university's section of forest ecology and biogeosciences added: "There's one species that needs to have high-density forest. That's the pleated woodpecker.
Pileated woodpeckers (Lee Vierling) Pileated woodpeckers favor a dense stand as they forage for ants
"It's a superb bird with a tall red crest on its head. It's a carpenter-ant foraging species so the denser the forest, the better for that exacting bird."
Past survey's of forest structure have tended to be fairly labour rigorous endeavors, involving sending many people into an area on foot to make the assessment. And while such assessments produce very detailed results, they are necessarily limited in their spatial in order.
Allying distantly sensed data to the ground effort should make territory surveys more relevant over much broader areas of forest.
"If we are able to foresee where woodpeckers are just based on satellite data then we can also surmise, based some other vegetation characteristics, that we strength also have higher variety of forest songbirds or even some mammals and reptiles. That's useful in land management planning and biodiversity planning," said Mr Adam.
"It's a lot easier to use satellite data. It's significant to still to do some ground-truthing at a few select points just to make sure we're not completely going off tangent from reality. But in general, yes, we can cover large areas with the flying lidar, and we're really hopeful with what we can use the space-borne lidar for because that has worldwide coverage, so we could use that at a much better scale."
The Icesat gadget is no longer in space, but it will be replaced later this decade. In totaling, the US space agency is thinking of flying another laser gadget on its Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) assignment.
Source...