Orthomosaics of Ross Island Penguin Colonies 2019 - 2021

These data are results from a novel multirobot path-planning method for conducting aerial surveys over large areas designed to make the best use of limited flight time. We implemented our planning algorithm with a team of drones to conduct multiple photographic aerial wildlife surveys of Cape Crozier, one of the largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world containing more than 300,000 nesting pairs. We used the same technique at the two smaller Adélie penguin colonies on Ross Island (Cape Bird and Cape Royds). At Cape Crozier, over 2 square kilometers was surveyed in about 3 hours. In contrast, previous human-piloted single-drone surveys of the same colony required over 2 days to complete. The resulting data are geo-referenced, 3d images of penguin colonies created from the UAV imagery. Raw images were stitched together using Metashape (https://www.agisoft.com/).