‍

Queen Bess Island is one of the most important pelican nesting grounds in the United States. After years of hurricanes, coastal erosion, land subsidence hastened by oil and gas extraction—and fouling in 2010 by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill- the largest oil spill in U.S. history, the island became so degraded that nesting pelicans were able to use only five of its 37 acres. A restoration process began in 2019, to preserve the island and its endangered brown pelican colonies.

The Nelson Ecosystem Lab at the University of Louisiana Lafayette turned to Trinity F90+ and the Sony UMC Camera to count pelican nests using object-based image analysis in eCognition. The goal of the mission was to automate the process of counting pelican nests on Queen Bess Island, which enabled researchers to save valuable time and financial resources. Researchers mapped the whole island in only 30 minutes while flying at an altitude that avoids any disturbance to the birds. Counting nests using object-based analysis, researchers came up with 4,320 nests on the first count. This data can be paired with on-the-ground survival and breeding information from other bird researchers to test small-scale patterns over the entire island using drone surveying.
In parallel, a 2D and 3D scene reconstruction of the entire island was developed using Pix4D Mapper, to analysis if restoration of the coastal line was successful.

‍