A drone hovering over a crop field carrying a thermal camera aimed at detecting lapwing nests on the ground.
PHOTO: ANDREA SANTANGELI, JOHN LOEHR
Every spring, a large number of ground-nests of farmland birds are accidentally destroyed by mechanical operations, such as ploughing and sowing. A new study from the University of Helsinki shows for the first time that such nests can be located using a drone in combination with artificial intelligence.
Farmland bird species are declining over most of Europe. Birds breeding on the ground are particularly vulnerable because they are exposed to mechanical operations, like ploughing and sowing, which take place in spring and often accidentally destroy nests.
Locating nests on the ground is challenging for the human eye, and highly time-consuming
Researchers flew a drone carrying a thermal camera over agricultural fields to record images. These were then fed to an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of accurately identifying nests, a first step to aid their protection. Researchers tested the system in Southern Finland near University of Helsinki’s Lammi Biological Station, using wild nests with eggs of the Lapwing Vanellus vanellus.
“We have been involved in conservation of ground-nesting farmland birds for years, and realized how difficult it is to locate nests on the ground. At least at high latitudes, the temperature of these nests is typically higher than that of the surrounding environment. Hence, we thought that thermal cameras could assist. A small pilot study indicated that thermal vision is hampered by vegetation and objects on the ground. Therefore, to make this an efficient system, we thought that the camera could be flown using a drone, and artificial intelligence could help to analyse the resulting thermal images. We show that this works. However, the system performed best under cloudy and cold conditions, and on even grounds,” says Andrea Santangeli, an Academy of Finland fellow at the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus, University of Helsinki.
Drone technology becoming rapidly popular in conservation
It is possible to map in near real-time the spread of diseases on crops in agricultural areas using drones with various sensors. The latter is an integral part of precision agriculture, a new way of crop production that makes large use of drone technology to monitor crops and maximize production efficiency.
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