1,720,974 research outputs found
Advancing remote sensing methods to monitor wildlife
Get PDFHistorically, natural history museums have collected and preserved specimens to provide data on the occurrence and distribution of wildlife populations. Zoologists still track animals by recording footprints, collecting dung and spoor and observing, recording and quantifying behaviour from the ground. However, these traditional observational techniques allow only a few populations to be monitored at once at limited spatial scales and disturbance from the ground can disrupt observation of natural behaviour. We are now in a golden age of technological advances and are able to remotely monitor and track wildlife via a variety of electronic sensors. Significant questions remain about how best to methodologically apply these new technologies for the purposes of wildlife monitoring. In this thesis, I consider challenges of using Earth observation satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to track wildlife and understand movement in relation to the expanding human footprint and anthropogenic risk. Specifically: (i) I collate and analyse spatially explicit data on the distribution of illegal hunting incidences via a systematic map. I show that hunting increases in proximity to roads, water bodies, and human settlement areas and there is a considerable lack of systematically collected quantitative data. (ii) I investigate acoustic disturbance to understand anthrophony from the species perspective. I create a mitigation method applied in the case of UAV noise using species weighted audiograms (iii) I test whether very high-resolution satellite imagery and machine learning can be used to automate the detection of African elephants in vast heterogeneous landscapes. This is achieved presenting a new method to monitor elephants (iv) I record the spatial relationship of African elephants in relation to the human footprint using GPS tracking data and satellite imagery. I show elephants readily adapt their foraging habits and itineraries, spatially and temporally in relation to human settlement. Accurate and up-to-date data is vital for effective wildlife conservation planning. Remote sensing technologies offer enhanced capabilities to understand the spatial relationship between wildlife and the increasing human footprint. This body of work contributes to the global wildlife conservation effort by devising methods that can enable more reliable data collection at larger spatial scales
UAV disturbance to wildlife data
No full textThe data includes UAV audio recordings taken in Wytham Woods, Oxford and secondary data of species audiograms. The data was then analysed using R and the code used for processing is available here - https://github.com/Isladup/acoustic_drone_disturbanc
Analysing the use of remote sensing & geospatial technology to combat wildlife crime in East and Southern Africa
No full textThis thesis analyses the use of remote sensing technologies in efforts that seek to combat wildlife crime in East and Southern Africa. Companies and organisations working on the development of remote sensing technology used for anti-poaching efforts, in the study region, are identified through the creation of a database. The social impacts and risks involved in using these technologies are then outlined by analysing the responses to a research survey from those in the conservation community working with wildlife crime. The species focus is on rhino and elephant poaching, thus, the thesis begins with a background on the legislation surrounding both the hunting and trade of these species. Stockpiling of rhino horn and elephant tusk will be discussed as well as other anti-poaching strategies that do not use remote sensing technology. Three key research questions are then answered: Which remote sensing technologies are in use and what kinds of companies and organisations are mainly working on their development? What are the main risks of using remote sensing technology to specifically target wildlife crime in this region? And can the increased use of remote sensing technologies to combat wildlife crime be regarded as an extension of the militarised approach to conservation? The last question is discussed in relation to existing research on this topic. Considering the findings from this paper, recommendations for further research are then made.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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