Tyler Nuckols
- @t.nuckols
- | he/they
Hi, I am working on a study to track wild elephant movement within an overlayed matrix of crop fields. We seek to understand how various landscape variables impact crop-raiding behavior and activity.
However, figuring out how to track the elephants is proving difficult.
- We cannot collar
- We cannot fly drones
- For ethical reasons, we cannot monitor in real-time without alerting farmers or rangers
We have camera traps, but the area is large, and we want to recreate the elephant's path through crops as close as possible. Are there any sensors or devices I may be overlooking or unaware of? Thanks!
30 October 2022 8:40am
I wonder if an acoustic location system would be feasible. GPS time synced AudioMoths or similar in a matrix array could probably track the sounds of individual or herds of elephants.
Elisabeth Bru
Imperial College London
4 November 2022 11:11am
Agreed - acoustic localisation could be handy here, with some cheap GPS-synced devices e.g. CARACALs worth checking out.
Talia Speaker
WILDLABS
World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
4 November 2022 3:56pm
Agreed, I was going to ask if you've looked into acoustic or also seismic sensors? E.g., I recently came across this paper using seismic sensors and a helpful little storymap overview of remote sensing tools for elephant monitoring, but I'm sure others here provide more insight. Also, @Alasdair / Arribada have worked on an elephant detection/early warning system using thermal sensors, not sure what the progress is but could be a helpful model on the real-time alert front!
4 November 2022 5:24pm
Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?
You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign.
Lars Holst Hansen
Aarhus University