PhD Oral Defense: The Rise of Unmanned Aircraft in Wildlife Science: A Review of Potential Contributions and their Application to Waterbird Research
PhD Defense of Dominique Chabot, Department of Natural Resource Sciences
The field of wildlife research and management tends to benefit from technological innovations such as remote sensing techniques that help to overcome the many challenges of studying and monitoring wild, free-ranging animals and their habitats. A new variety of remote sensing devices, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), has recently become available for public and commercial use, promising to offer further support to wildlife science. Although a growing variety of preliminary efforts to apply UAS in the discipline have been undertaken, the technology is yet to gain any significant traction in practice. The overall aim of this project is to help stimulate and guide the adoption of UAS in wildlife science by taking a distinctly rigorous, contextualized and integrated approach.