<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/exciting-to-see-them-on-video-ai-tech-at-wind-sites-could-change-what-we-know-about-bats-and-turbines/>
"At a still-secret site in New South Wales (NSW), microbats circle around a
meteorological mast during the night – are they investigating it? Are they
meeting friends or picking up a mate? Is it the new dinner spot?
All of these are questions for the future, says Biosis zoologist Felicity
Williams.
Right now, Williams is simply excited to get confirmation that the bats are
there.
“It’s so exciting to see bats on video,” she told
Renew Economy. “In the past
when we’ve had call data, it’s like doing [bat identification] with a blindfold
on.”
Environmental approval consultancy Biosis is working with a new piece of US
software that can identify and track individual bats, to try to better predict
how they move in and around wind turbines.
Two thermal cameras, devices that have long been used in the field to track
birds and bats, are set up near the meteorological mast, a temporary tower set
up with equipment to measure all kinds of things a wind developer would like to
know about a site, including bat call detectors up to a height of 120m.
An algorithm then matches the visual data with the audio, giving a full picture
about who is in the sky and how they’re moving through space.
The next trick will be to find out what the bats are doing up there and why –
whether it’s social, foraging, depending on wind speeds or temperature, or
something else – because this could radically change the bat-related
curtailment measures environmental regulators are considering for wind farms."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
