{"id":449842,"date":"2021-08-17T07:08:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T14:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=449842"},"modified":"2025-04-01T13:10:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:10:26","slug":"remote-sensing-fundamentals","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/remote-sensing-fundamentals","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Counting Birds in the Falkland Islands&#8217;, and other Remote Sensing Fundamentals"},"author":1332,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[551],"tags":[482772,1701,141,10332,12662],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478582],"esri_blog_department":[478172],"class_list":["post-449842","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imagery","tag-ai-ml","tag-deep-learning","tag-drones","tag-imagery","tag-remote-sensing","esri-blog-category-imagery","esri_blog_department-mapping"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"At the University of Vermont\u2019s Spatial Analysis Lab, students learn how to use remote sensing to address pressing environmental problems.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Jarlath O\u2019Neil-Dunne, director of the University of Vermont\u2019s Spatial Analysis Lab, instills in his students the importance of fundamental tradecraft in remote sensing.\r\n\r\nKey Takeaways\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Wildlife biologists fly drones to capture imagery and update Falkland Islands seabird population data.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>AI with remote sensing and GIS can tell visual stories and answer environmental questions.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Subject-matter expertise is as essential as technological know-how.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The Falkland Islands contain some of the world\u2019s largest seabird breeding grounds. Here, thousands of black-browed albatrosses and southern rockhopper penguins coexist with around 230 other bird species. For scientists committed to counting the bird population\u2014essential for measuring the health of the populations and the effects of environmental changes\u2014manual counts can be tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors.\r\n\r\nWildlife biologists recently employed a novel application of remote sensing, a broad term that refers to gathering data on an area or object without physically interacting with it. Instead of inspecting the area on foot, they sent drones flying overhead to capture around 10,000 images that were organized within a geographic information system (GIS).\r\n\r\nMadeline Hayes, a remote sensing analyst at Duke University\u2019s Marine Lab, used these images to teach a deep learning program to distinguish an albatross from a penguin. Armed with the knowledge, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/artificial-intelligence\/overview\">artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> was able to perform a quick and accurate count. The newly classified data was imported into the GIS to generate a color-coded map of species distribution over the study region."},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[449922,449932,449982]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>A Tool to Solve Problems<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nHayes studied remote sensing at the University of Vermont\u2019s Spatial Analysis Lab, where Jarlath O\u2019Neil-Dunne, the program\u2019s director, trains students in using remote sensing to tackle environmental problems.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of the reasons I love our lab is we\u2019re in UVM\u2019s School of Natural Resources, not the Geospatial Studies program,\u201d he said. \u201cGeospatial technology is just a tool we use to solve environmental problems.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe points to Hayes\u2019 work as an example of how important domain knowledge is in relation to technological know-how. \u201cShe came to us with no drone experience, but what really made her successful is she wasn\u2019t enamored with the technology,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need technology experts, but we also really need folks who can couple subject matter expertise with the technology. How many drone experts understand how to apply drones to the problem of mapping penguins in the Falklands?\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":449942,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>A Natural Symbiosis<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDrones and GIS share a natural symbiosis. For millennia, maps have provided a bird\u2019s-eye-view perspective that helps people contextualize large areas. Drone imagery makes this bird\u2019s-eye-view literal, while GIS syncs the images to a map where they can be analyzed along with other data. By locking the images to precise physical locations, GIS allows people to examine the same areas over time.\r\n\r\nUntil recently, remote sensing required access to expensive technologies, such as satellites or piloted aircraft using lidar to create 3D images. Drones, which have become both less expensive and more popular in recent years, can now facilitate many of the same functions. \u201cDrones have really <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SycK95pAIhM&amp;list=PLaPDDLTCmy4aV8wApg_O-5cNua4-0bGah&amp;index=3\">democratized remote sensing<\/a>,\u201d O\u2019Neil-Dunne said.\r\n\r\nThe danger, as with so many accessible technologies, is that this ease can obscure the need for a strong foundation. It\u2019s not enough to simply fly a drone and let the technology work its magic. O\u2019Neil-Dunne emphasizes a strong grounding in the fundamentals of remote sensing with his students. But what are those fundamentals?\r\n<h3><strong>Remote Sensing Fundamentals<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nAt the most basic level, remote sensing is the same, no matter what technology is used. Some kind of electromagnetic radiation, such as sunlight or a laser collecting lidar data, illuminates a target. This energy bounces off the target, to be recorded by a sensor and sent to a processor to build an image. From this output, objects can be detected, counted, quantified, and a number of relevant conclusions can be drawn.\r\n\r\nWithin these simple steps lies an enormous amount of variation, requiring the operator to know something about methodologies and the benefits and limitations of different tools and approaches. Some terrain, such as wetlands, requires very careful application and a diverse knowledge base for remote sensing to yield decent results. Operator decisions encompass everything from sensor calibration to resolution rates to segmentation algorithms."},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[449962,449972,449952]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"O\u2019Neil-Dunne\u2019s idea of remote sensing fundamentals includes a keen understanding of the most recent findings on human cognition. The goal is not only to understand how machines deal with data, but also how people process information derived from data. The ability to synthesize information and apply it to domain expertise produces what O\u2019Neil-Dunne calls optimal remote sensing tradecraft.\r\n\r\n\u201cRemote sensing has always been both an art and a science,\u201d he said. \u201cMy concern is that in today\u2019s world we\u2019ve focused too much on the science side\u2014specifically, the data science side. We\u2019ve run the risk in the last decade of creating a new batch of professionals that are very proficient at processing large amounts of data using fancy algorithms but may lack the domain expertise and qualitative skills necessary to solve the pressing problems of the future.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>Visual Storytelling<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nFor O\u2019Neil-Dunne, an effective remote sensing project is about telling a compelling story with visuals. Just as an author can bring a lifetime of diverse experiences to bear when crafting a novel, a knowledge set that includes\u2014but isn\u2019t limited to\u2014technical considerations can strengthen a story told through remote sensing.\r\n\r\nO\u2019Neill-Dunne returned to the topic of Hayes\u2019 Falklands project. \u201cShe\u2019s talked about the challenges she had in developing a deep learning training set of 10,000 penguin reference points, all so she could count hundreds of thousands of birds,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can imagine all the different skills that she needed, that she developed and accumulated along the way, to pull that off.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nLearn about the latest advancements to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-image\/options\/arcgis-online?rsource=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.esri.com%2Fen-us%2Farcgis%2Fproducts%2Farcgis-online-imagery%2Foverview\">host, stream and analyze imagery in the cloud<\/a>."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h2><strong>Teaching Remote Sensing Tradecraft<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nJarlath O\u2019Neil-Dunne, director of the University of Vermont\u2019s Spatial Analysis Lab, believes teaching remote sensing should involve an expansive idea of the fundamentals of tradecraft. But there are also modes of instruction he believes could be retired. \u201cWe can reduce the number of software packages our students work with,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is one of the exciting things about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/imagery-remote-sensing\/overview\">ArcGIS<\/a>, that we have a single platform we can train our students on.\u201d\r\n\r\nA modern remote sensing education should also involve topics like privacy and equity. The latter figures heavily in some of O\u2019Neil-Dunne\u2019s own research into tree canopy assessments, which reveals how certain communities in cities have more tree cover than others, and how these conditions have changed over time.\r\n\r\n\u201cAccurate mapping of the change cannot be accomplished by simply adopting an amazing training data set and applying it to an AI algorithm,\u201d he said. O\u2019Neil-Dunne and his team must rely almost exclusively on publicly available imagery and lidar. That means working carefully to make different data sets line up, maximizing the strengths of some and minimizing the weakness of others.\r\n\r\nThose tasks benefit from the ability of GIS to serve as a common meeting ground for different data sources, producing efficient workflows. Other types of data, such as historical maps of real estate \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-living-atlas\/announcements\/redlining-data-now-in-arcgis-living-atlas\/\">redlining<\/a>\u201d that segregated Black Americans from home ownership, can also be added via GIS, allowing for a more expansive analysis of equity issues.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Counting Birds, and Other Remote Sensing Fundamentals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At the University of Vermont\u2019s Spatial Analysis Lab, students learn how to use remote sensing to address pressing environmental problems.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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