researcher are dog Adélie penguin in Antarctica using an unusual method – they developed an algorithm to track their guano , which is seeable from space .
Yes , yes , we know , technically you could see anything from blank with agood enough camera , but this is still a wonderful instance to the current US administration of why utilizing NASA forEarth science and not just spaceis significant .
research worker have been using NASA ’s Landsat satellite for the last 30 years to take Adélie penguin movements in the Antarctic and in the unconscious process have divulge oodles of new colony , tracked universe increase and decline , and written several put out papers about their findings .
All of this feeds into anonline databasethat monitors and follow the penguin populations . Using satellites means the researchers can view areas like the Danger Islands , which are rarely studied due to the sea ice covert making access code to the island difficult .
It was NASA scientist Mathew Schwaller who first came up with the idea in 1984 to watch the Adélie penguins using Landsat 5 . His theory was that the penguins nest in large population and where you have prominent groups of animals , you also have a large amount of guano – otherwise make love as poop .
Schwaller thought the guano stains might be heavy enough for the satellite to see , meaning a new means to fundamentally sight on the penguins and watch over them to place not antecedently study , and it turn out he was right .
Researchers at Stony Brook University , New York , who are also involved in the penguin database , developed an algorithm by try out rock candy at cognize colonies and then flag up place on the artificial satellite look-alike of the Antarctic with the same people of colour – guano - stained glass usher a pinker color than unstained surfaces – to bump previously nameless colonies .
So far , they have been able to discover around 166,000 penguins on Brash Island , 23,000 on Earle Island , and 7,000 on Darwin Island that had not been antecedently recorded or accounted for .
The sizing of the pel used in the Landsat satellites is the combining weight of 30 x 30 time ( 100 x 100 feet ) , so it does n’t necessarily pick up small colonies . By comparing field observation and high - solving commercial satellite with a opinion of 1 x 1 meter ( 3 x 3 feet ) public square , they attain a 50 pct succeeder charge per unit of identifying colony with fewer than 3,000 education couplet . With colonies of around 10,000 pairs , the algorithm detected 97 percent of the penguin .
“ We ’re far from a point where satellites are going to make field work irrelevant . Instead , it has made fieldwork more efficient,”explainedHeather Lynch of Stony Brook . “ There is a nice synergy between satellite - ground surveys and plain survey that I expect will be thestatus quofor a foresightful sentence . ”
