Autonomous Monitoring of
Vulnerable Habitats
And other tales..
Robin Freeman, CEES, Microsoft Research
13 July 2007
Overview
• Introduction
• Previous Work
– Analysing Avian Navigation
• Habitat Monitoring
• Brief Results
• Future Work
Introduction
– About Me
• BSc CS-AI, MSc Evolutionary and Adaptive
Systems,
• D.Phil (Engineering and Zoology)
– Part of the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training
Centre, Oxford
– Trains physical and computation sciences graduates in
biology before starting PhD in life sciences.
• Now a Post-Doc at Microsoft Research
– Computational Ecology and Biodiversity Science Group
– European Science Initiative, External Research Office.
3
~9hrs
~15min
Introduction
• Analysing Avian Navigation
• GPS Tracking of Pigeons, Oxford
• GPS Tracking of Manx Shearwaters, Skomer
• Habitat Monitoring
• Manx Shearwater
– Skomer Island, Wales
6
Introduction
– Zoological Interest
• Specific questions (Sensory basis of navigation),
• Conservation (home range, behavioural anomalies),
• Other general questions.
– Technical Interest
• Novel algorithms/methods
– Analysis of positional information
– Feedback to bio-robotics, Complex Systems, Artificial Life, etc
7
Pigeons? - Why Pigeons?
• Model Navigational Species
– Much easier to study than wild birds,
• Birds return to a maintained loft (Wytham).
– Allows attachment of GPS device
– Large body of research to draw on.
• Pigeon navigation has been studied for over 100
years.
How Do They Navigate?
• Two hypotheses for the sensory basis of
navigation in the familiar area
– ‘Map and Compass’
• Compass controlled navigation (as it is at
unfamiliar locations).
– Series of decision points using compass.
– ‘Pilotage’
• Independent of a compass, relying directly on
visual cues
– Oh look, there’s that house!
Clock Shift
• Experiment
– Train the birds to ‘recapitulate’ routes to
home,
– Then ‘clock-shift’ the birds by 90°
• Sets up a direct competition between visual
landmarks (the recapitulated route) and erroneous
compass instructions
With D Biro, J Meade, T Guilford & S J Roberts
• Nearest Neighbour Analysis
• Shows offset and variance
between controls and familiar
clock-shift.
Tracks ranked by Mahalonobis
distance from recapping distribution
Delayed Clock shift response
(landmark related)
• Demonstrates that both mechanisms must
be involved.
– The birds must be able to home using visual
information alone (they recapitulate)
– Consistent deviation from recapitulated path
• Offset? Zigzag?
Biro D, Freeman R, Meade J, S. Roberts, Guilford T. (2007) PNAS. 104(18)
Behavioural Segmentation
- Hidden-Markov Models
- Positional Entropy
14
Landscape Analysis
•
More likely to fly over edge ‘rich’ areas
•
Flight pattern becomes less predictable
over edge rich areas.
Lau KK, Roberts S, Biro D, Freeman R, Meade J, Guilford T. (2006) J. Theo. Bio. 239(1) pp71-78
Paired Homing Pigeon Flight

GPS data for 48 Pigeons from
4 diff. sites

All possible pairs considered

Any real interaction between
the birds should be seen as
higher coupling between real
pairs

Other pairs may show

High coupling due to same
landscape/other unknown
variables
Actual pair
Bird paired
with self
Bird & random
bird from
different site
Birds which flew together show significantly (p < 0.05) higher coupling
than other possible pairings. Implies some form of information
transfer.
Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus)
• Highly pelagic, migratory
seabird.
• Burrow dwelling, central
place forager.
• UK summer breeding
• Winters in South America
• 250, 000 – 300, 000 breeding
pairs.
• 45% on three
Pembrokeshire islands,
Skomer, Skokholm and
Middleholm;
• 36% on Rum.
18
Motivation
• Ecology and Behaviour very similar to
other Procellariiformes
– Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters.
• 19 of 21 Albatross Species now globally
threatened;
• Devastating impact of long-line fishing
• Understanding their behaviour, habitat and ecology
may allow us to reduce this decline.
19
Motivation
UK Seabird decline over recent years
Source: JNCC, UK Seabirds 2005
20
21
Skomer Island
• Small Island (~2km long) off
coast of Wales
• Home to large populations
of Guillemots, Razorbills,
Kittiwakes, Puffins, Fulmars
• Worlds largest population of
Manx Shearwaters
• Well established research
centre and study
programmes
22
Skomer Island
23
Previous Work
• GPS Tracking of Manx Shearwater
– Distribution of foraging was largely unknown;
• South to Spain;
– Interaction
• With fisheries?
• Environmental variables?
– Establishment of Marine protection zones.
24
– Foraging largely
confined to Irish Sea;
– Birds did not fly far
south..
• Even when they had the
opportunity to do so.
• Climate effect?
– Clustered areas;
– Rafting.
Right: Distribution of individual over trips of
1 to 7 days. Red shows incubating birds,
blue chick rearing
25
Speed Vs VecN
1
0.8
Normalised Vector
– Each 2-hourly fix
gives a small burst
of 1Hz data.
– Bursts can be
segmented into
different
behaviours.
1.2
0.6
0.4
0.2
– Speed Vs
Directionality
0
-5
0
5
10
15
Speed (m/s)
20
25
30
Sitting & Erratic Movement
Directional Movement
27
– Speed has no obvious
effect on depth
– Time of day appears to
(right)
28
Autonomous Habitat Monitoring
• Working closely with Academic Partners
– University of Oxford
• Prof. Tim Guilford, Animal Behaviour
• Prof. Chris Perrins, Edward Grey Ornithology
Institute
– University of Freie Berlin
• Tomasz Naumowicz, PHD, Free University Berlin
• Prof Torben Weis, U Duisburg-Essen
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Autonomous Habitat Monitoring
• Create and deploy a wireless sensor
network that can:
– Monitor the visitations of individual birds;
– Monitor environmental conditions inside and outside
the burrow;
– Provide a pilot system for eventual integration with
GPS tracking;
– Do this all night, every night…
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Methods
• Approx. 10 Burrow
monitored
– Ringed and RFID
tagged pair of birds in
each burrow;
– Sensors & wireless
sensor node to each
burrow;
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Methods
• Network
– ScatterWeb platform
from Freie Universitat
Berlin;
• Nodes
– 2 x Passive Infrared
– 2 x Temp/Humidity
– RFID Detector
32
Initial Results
• No observable impact on birds’ behaviour
– No evidence of digging, distress or
abandonment.
• Of 10 monitored burrows
– 7 hatched (last week)
– Remainder still on eggs
33
Initial Results
– Obvious nocturnal
distribution of activity
• Bimodal?
– Resolution and density of
data already significantly
higher that achievable using
traditional methods.
All recorded events
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2007/05/14 12:00
2007/05/15 00:00
2007/05/15 12:00
35
Initial Results
36
00:00
Temperature
Variation over 4
days (20-23 June)
•
06:00
18:00
•
Red: Temp
Outside
Green: Temp
Inside
12:00
37
Future Questions…
– Do individuals return at specific times?
– How do pairs alternate feeding strategies?
– How does activity/environment vary across
space and time?
– How do the results vary with weather?
38
Future Directions
• Deploy second network
– Pilot has allowed us to iron out most
problems;
– Hope to set up additional network this winter.
• Create a toolkit that any ecologist can deploy and
use.
• Integrate GPS tracking with network
– Continual monitoring of foraging behaviour.
39
~9hrs
~15min
An Aside (1)
41
An Aside (2)
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