Netty Cheruto
- @Netty_Cheruto
- | She/her
About this Episode
The WILDLABS Tech Tutors are here to answer the "how do I do that?" questions of conservation technology! These tutorials will provide practical skills and steps that will become the building blocks you need to push your conservation tech work and research forward. This season, the focus will be to answer the questions emerging from our growing East Africa regional community, while also opening up new tech skills for our global community.
On Thursday,18th May at 4 PM EAT / 2PM BST, Howard Frederick, a conservation biologist working with the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute led a tutorial on ' How do I create an aerial survey flight plan for wildlife monitoring?'. As a follow-up episode of Dr.Richard's tutorial on 'How do I get started with Systematic reconnaissance flights (SRFs) for wildlife survey?', the session explored open-source tools to create flight plans, survey designs and methods for aerial sample counts and the practicalities of creating sample strata and flight plans.
Meet your Tutor: Howard Frederick
Howard Frederick is a conservation biologist working with Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) as a Research Associate. Howard has specialized in aerial surveys of large mammals, GIS &RS, and conservation education. He has been involved in training aerial survey teams, and in collecting and analyzing critical survey data such as the Great Elephant census project while working as a Technical Advisor for Vulcan Inc.
You can have a look at more of Howard's work here.
We asked Howard....
What will I learn in this episode?
I will give a tutorial on some of the open-source tools to create flight plans and survey designs for aerial sample counts.
I will also give a brief overview of methods (aerial total, strip and block counts), then discuss the practicalities of creating sample strata and flight plans.
How can I learn more about creating flight plans for aerial survey sample counts?
Aerial survey methods in general are covered in several books, with the most foundational being Norton-Griffiths 1978 "Counting Animals".
There are regular survey reports from aerial surveys in many countries, and these are really worth reading . Good resources:
- Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute publications - www.TAWIRI.or.tz
- Kenya Wildlife Service resources: www.KWS.go.ke
- Aerial Wildlife Survey reports: https://www.alberta.ca/aerial-wildlife-survey-reports.aspx
What advice do you have for a complete beginner in this subject?
Understanding what kind of data is needed by managers will inform you about what kind of survey monitoring should take place - mapping, accuracy, and so on. Learning about the needs of management, together with understanding some of the fundamental methods mentioned in the books above, will guide you.
For a beginner, reading survey reports will demonstrate a lot of these issues.
Learn more about upcoming Tutorials
We have had very insightful and diverse discussions in our Tech Tutors, East Africa tutorials, and we hope you have benefitted from our speakers and the topics covered. If you were not able to join us for our prior sessions, you can catch up with our previous episodes in our YouTube channel.
To find out more about the entire season, kindly visit this page.
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