Development of Visual Database Protocols and Applications for Inventory and Monitoring

Research Task: 8327CNB.1.0
Task Manager: Ron Osborn

Visual information often provides the data to recognize patterns, reveal change, and understand complex processes in population changes, ecosystem interactions, and landscape dynamics. Land and resource managers routinely use photography, which they catalogue, to document their resources. Nevertheless, these datasets are often difficult to build, maintain, access, share, and analyze. Moreover, rarely are guidelines or standards in place to ensure that these visual information resources can improve our scientific understanding or promote its communication. This task focuses on activities for which visual information technologies are critical for scientific understanding or support of management actions. Work involves developing, demonstrating, and transfering methodologies to clients using visual information for (1) animal identification that supports research to understand wildlife population ecology, and (2) vegetation, landscape, and wildfire assessments that incorporate interactive products associated with riparian community information, GIS vegetation maps, and vegetation community composition and fuel loads. Decision support systems for animal identification currently focus on the endangered Florida manatee and wild horses on Federal lands.

 For more information contact Ron Osborn