00:01What animals live in Germany's national parks?
00:04How are their populations developing?
00:06And what impact is climate change having on these specially protected areas across Germany?
00:12To answer these questions, researchers need a lot of data.
00:17We don't have enough resources to send so many people out.
00:21We would need at least 20 of me just classifying images.
00:25Artificial intelligence can help there.
00:28Marco Heurich from Freiburg University is involved in a project to develop an AI-supported monitoring system.
00:36Some 13 German national parks are amongst those taking part.
00:41From the Wadden Sea in the north to the Eiffel in the west,
00:46the Oder Valley in the east and the Bavarian forest in the south.
00:50Images from some 1,000 cameras are being assessed along with hundreds of audio and climate data sources.
00:57Marco Heurich and his colleague Isabel Jorczyk are checking the camera traps in the Bavarian Forest National Park.
01:10Let's look at the camera traps.
01:16We have the camera traps and they have a sensor which triggers when something warm and quick is passing by.
01:25So basically ground-dwelling animals.
01:27We have red deer and row deer mostly here and we mostly see red deer and also wild boars.
01:33What is rare are lynx and wolves.
01:35But we also see a lot of birds that are landing in front of the camera and can trigger the camera.
01:41But mostly deer.
01:43Animal populations here are largely undisturbed.
01:46This park was set up over 50 years ago to protect the natural environment.
01:51Human activities like logging, intensive farming or road construction are not permitted.
01:57But Germany's national parks are for people too.
02:01They are places to walk, enjoy the peace and quiet and observe wildlife.
02:07In the animal enclosure in the Bavarian Forest, visitors can watch the animals better than in the wild.
02:13Some 40 species of mammals and birds live in the 200 hectare area, where conditions are very close to those in the wild.
02:26These old-growth forests, they are important for biodiversity conservation.
02:31And in managed forests, normally you harvest the trees, but here they can grow, they can die.
02:37And especially the dead trees, standing and also lying, they are important.
02:41Because they cover 30% of the whole forest biodiversity, at least in Central Europe.
02:48Dead trees provide a habitat for birds and insects and a place for fungi to thrive.
02:54The rotting wood also releases nutrients into the soil and helps to improve its quality.
03:05The idea besides this inventory is also to have a long-term monitoring.
03:09Then we can see trends.
03:11Like, for example, if the temperature is changing, like global change, hotter summer, less snow in winter.
03:21How does this affect the ecosystems and the species within the ecosystem?
03:26Climate change is impacting the national parks.
03:30With the data, the researchers want to identify which animals and plants are best adapting to the changes.
03:37That means they need to do a lot of field trips.
03:40The perfect thing would be that we even have a transmission from the field into the lab.
03:47But we have to go this traditional way with the SD cards.
03:50And it's also necessary because you also have to exchange batteries.
03:54Because under such harsh conditions, when it's cold, the batteries are losing energy.
03:59And also, like in front of the cameras, you might have grass or fern or whatever.
04:04You have to remove it.
04:05Otherwise, you will have just empty pictures.
04:08And so maintenance in the field is anyway necessary.
04:11Back at the office, AI steps in.
04:15Various algorithms are deployed.
04:18Firstly, all the photos, including people, have to be blurred for the sake of data protection.
04:24Then a program identifies animal species.
04:28Others determine age and sex.
04:31It's up to the humans to check the work of AI.
04:34It's far from perfect.
04:36Sometimes the AI does not see animals in the pictures, which then have to be found by humans.
04:43But also there are certain species, especially rare species, where we don't have a lot of pictures to train the AI.
04:49That the AI then cannot classify in turn.
04:52So even though sometimes the AI is really confident in its guess, a human will know that this is not true.
04:59Because of course the AI can only classify what it was trained on.
05:03But the technology still does some heavy lifting.
05:07I think my job would be possible, but very different.
05:12So instead of managing and doing a lot of analysis, I would just sit here for hours on end classifying images.
05:18AI can also analyse aerial images.
05:22That should make the monitoring of forests more efficient.
05:25By comparing those images with old data sets, it will also be easier to trace long-term developments.
05:32Traditionally the people go out and they have an inventory plot, a sample plot.
05:38And then they go out, they measure the height of the tree and the species.
05:41And our idea is to do that with AI.
05:45And using ordinary data which is already available without additional costs.
05:50It's even possible to monitor the growth of individual trees with AI image analysis.
05:57The researchers have found out that the tallest trees stand in the far north of the national park.
06:02New sound analysis methods are also being tested as part of the AI project.
06:09The acoustic monitoring uses digital microphones to record sounds made by animals.
06:16They can even pick up ultrasound frequencies.
06:20This allows the identification of animals purely from their acoustic signals.
06:26We get all animal calls.
06:28For example, if a lynx is calling or a roe deer is barking.
06:32But also all the bird species which are vocalising, especially in the spring, we can record them.
06:38And it's also an idea to get the soundscape.
06:41So how is sound distributed in the protected areas.
06:45In the future, researchers hope the data from the national park project will provide more insights into long-term changes in animal behaviour and the environment.
06:55The new AI tools will play a vital role in the tests.
06:59But for global use, they will have to be adapted to suit regional conditions.
07:04Stacked off in the natural park.
07:05They want to keep you connected with the potential.
07:06The
07:23old
07:27doors
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