MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. The autumn aerial survey of polar bears finished in Yakutia's Bear Islands Nature Reserve. Scientists used for the first time multispectral aerial photography off a helicopter to study predators, and the images will be processed by artificial intelligence, press service of the national nature reserves authority, Roszapovedcenter, told TASS.
"For the first time, specialists have used instrumental multispectral aerial photography of the polar bear and its habitats off a helicopter," the press service said. "Multispectral aerial photography allows obtaining photos and video images in the visible range as well as in the infrared thermal spectrum, thus specialists are able to detect more accurately animals in difficult weather conditions."
The research was conducted in two stages. On the first day, 99 polar bears were recorded, and just over 70 predators - during the second flight.
"The consistent instrumental aerial surveys of the polar bear within the nature reserve using unmanned aircraft systems and a helicopter will allow for a comparative effectiveness analysis of different aircraft carriers to determine their features and use for different monitoring tasks. In addition to the specialists, the photos will be processed by artificial intelligence trained to recognize polar bears in photographs taken in various weather conditions. The accuracy and speed of such processing is many times higher than human capabilities," the press service quoted the research participant, the Ecofactor Environmental Center's Executive Director Ilya Chernook as saying.
A year earlier, the Bear Islands Reserve conducted a multispectral monitoring using unmanned aerial vehicles and artificial intelligence to estimate the group's abundance in that protected area for the first time.
The survey results will be announced after processing of a few dozen thousands of photographs. Obtained data may be used in the White Bear Census large-scale scientific research project that continues since 2022.