Multi-perspective monitoring of wildlife and human activities from camera traps and drones with deep learning models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chen, Hao, Qiu, Fang, An, Li, Stow, Douglas, Bohnett, Eve, Lyu, Haitao, Tian, Shuang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chen, Hao
Qiu, Fang
An, Li
Stow, Douglas
Bohnett, Eve
Lyu, Haitao
Tian, Shuang
author_facet Chen, Hao
Qiu, Fang
An, Li
Stow, Douglas
Bohnett, Eve
Lyu, Haitao
Tian, Shuang
contents Wildlife and human activities are key components of landscape systems. Understanding their spatial distribution is essential for evaluating human wildlife interactions and informing effective conservation planning. Multiperspective monitoring of wildlife and human activities by combining camera traps and drone imagery. Capturing the spatial patterns of their distributions, which allows the identification of the overlap of their activity zones and the assessment of the degree of human wildlife conflict. The study was conducted in Chitwan National Park (CNP), Nepal, and adjacent regions. Images collected by visible and nearinfrared camera traps and thermal infrared drones from February to July 2022 were processed to create training and testing datasets, which were used to build deep learning models to automatic identify wildlife and human activities. Drone collected thermal imagery was used for detecting targets to provide a multiple monitoring perspective. Spatial pattern analysis was performed to identify animal and resident activity hotspots and delineation potential human wildlife conflict zones. Among the deep learning models tested, YOLOv11s achieved the highest performance with a precision of 96.2%, recall of 92.3%, mAP50 of 96.7%, and mAP50 of 81.3%, making it the most effective for detecting objects in camera trap imagery. Drone based thermal imagery, analyzed with an enhanced Faster RCNN model, added a complementary aerial viewpoint for camera trap detections. Spatial pattern analysis identified clear hotspots for both wildlife and human activities and their overlapping patterns within certain areas in the CNP and buffer zones indicating potential conflict. This study reveals human wildlife conflicts within the conserved landscape. Integrating multiperspective monitoring with automated object detection enhances wildlife surveillance and landscape management.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_15629
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-perspective monitoring of wildlife and human activities from camera traps and drones with deep learning models
Chen, Hao
Qiu, Fang
An, Li
Stow, Douglas
Bohnett, Eve
Lyu, Haitao
Tian, Shuang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Wildlife and human activities are key components of landscape systems. Understanding their spatial distribution is essential for evaluating human wildlife interactions and informing effective conservation planning. Multiperspective monitoring of wildlife and human activities by combining camera traps and drone imagery. Capturing the spatial patterns of their distributions, which allows the identification of the overlap of their activity zones and the assessment of the degree of human wildlife conflict. The study was conducted in Chitwan National Park (CNP), Nepal, and adjacent regions. Images collected by visible and nearinfrared camera traps and thermal infrared drones from February to July 2022 were processed to create training and testing datasets, which were used to build deep learning models to automatic identify wildlife and human activities. Drone collected thermal imagery was used for detecting targets to provide a multiple monitoring perspective. Spatial pattern analysis was performed to identify animal and resident activity hotspots and delineation potential human wildlife conflict zones. Among the deep learning models tested, YOLOv11s achieved the highest performance with a precision of 96.2%, recall of 92.3%, mAP50 of 96.7%, and mAP50 of 81.3%, making it the most effective for detecting objects in camera trap imagery. Drone based thermal imagery, analyzed with an enhanced Faster RCNN model, added a complementary aerial viewpoint for camera trap detections. Spatial pattern analysis identified clear hotspots for both wildlife and human activities and their overlapping patterns within certain areas in the CNP and buffer zones indicating potential conflict. This study reveals human wildlife conflicts within the conserved landscape. Integrating multiperspective monitoring with automated object detection enhances wildlife surveillance and landscape management.
title Multi-perspective monitoring of wildlife and human activities from camera traps and drones with deep learning models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15629