A Less Invasive, More Accurate Way to Survey Penguin Colonies

  • Keith Williams works on the UAS instrument atop a snow-covered hill. Penguins are visible in the background.
    UNAVCO engineer Keith Williams preps the UAS for the flights. (Photo/Annie Zaino, UNAVCO)
  • Annie Zaino works on GPS base. Snow-covered Mount Erebus is visible in the background.
    Annie Zaino sets up a base GPS over an existing USGS benchmark. (Photo/Keith Williams, UNAVCO)
  • Target on ground marks georeference location. One penguin is lying atop a rock on its stomach and another penguin stands to its right. Many more penguins are visible in the back right of the image. Snow-covered Mount Erebus is visible in the background.
    Target that will be used to georeference UAS imagery to real-world coordinates. (Photo/Keith Williams, UNAVCO)
  • Adult Adélie penguins surround chicks. Many penguins are located at the shoreline near the water and ice sheets are visible in the background.
    Adult Adélie penguins keep watch over the chicks within the larger Crozier colony. (Photo/Keith Williams, UNAVCO)
  • Trible R10 instrument is set up at Cape Royds. Three penguins are standing close to the instrument with dozens more further back. Mount Erebus is visible in the background.
    Measuring in control points with a Trimble R10 at Cape Royds. (Photo/Annie Zaino, UNAVCO)
  • Image from Pat's Peak that gives wide view of the shore, sea, and ice sheets atop the water.
    Taken from Pat’s Peak, Cape Crozier, where the team planned the UAS survey. (Photo/Annie Zaino, UNAVCO)
  • Keith Williams is tending to the UAS to prepare it for flight. Many penguins are visible in the background.
    UNAVCO engineer Keith Williams preps the UAS for the first Crozier flight. (Photo/Annie Zaino, UNAVCO)

Unoccupied aerial systems (UAS) show promise for accurately surveying penguin populations in Antarctica. Two UNAVCO-supported UAS surveys of Adélie penguins this season (2018-19) will lend insight into penguin nesting habits. The first took place in early December 2018 with a key goal of counting the nesting adults. The second was timed with the chick counts in January to compare results from the aerial photos to the counts made on the ground. Visual tallies of chicks at Cape Royds is fairly simple, with approximately 3000 pairs of adults. However, the Cape Crozier colony is much larger, with nearly 300,000 pairs of adults and a total of around 1,000,000 adults and chicks. This size makes the on-the-ground census quite cumbersome, and is somewhat intrusive as researchers must walk through the colonies to complete the counts. A UAS can survey the entire Royds colony in about 30 minutes and the Crozier colony in one to two days, creating a permanent photographic record of the region with high enough resolution to count the individual penguins as well as easily distinguish between adults and chicks.

Using structure from motion (SfM), overlapping photos taken by the UAS can be stitched together to produce point clouds, digital elevation models (DEMs), meshes (textured and untextured), and orthomosaics. Orthomosaics coupled with DEMs will aid in understanding where the Adélies prefer to place their nesting sites. Information that can be gathered includes the prevalence of small stones for nest building, location and distance to water entry, ground slope, slope aspect, population density, and snow/ice proximity.

Project Information

  • Principal Investigator(s): David Ainley, H. T. Harvey & Associates; Grant Ballard and Annie Schmidt, Point Blue Conservation Science
  • UNAVCO Engineer(s): Annie Zaino and Keith Williams
  • Dates: January 10-15, 2019
  • Location: Cape Crozier and Cape Royds Adélie penguin colonies, Ross Island, Antarctica (map)
  • Funding Source: NSF-PLR Antarctic
  • Proposal Name: A Full Lifecycle Approach to Understanding Adélie Penguin Response to Changing Pack Ice Conditions in the Ross Sea
  • Proposal Number: 1543541

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