Flocks from Above: Studying Geese with Drones (MSc project)

Background

In spring, brent and barnacle geese gather in the Wadden Sea to build up energy reserves for their migration to Arctic breeding grounds. Both share similar resources and rely on comparable habitats during this fuelling period. This overlap suggests that competition between them may play an important role. To understand potential consequences, it is essential, yet unexplored, to study how the species interact. As a first step, this project aims to examine flock composition, distribution, and dynamics of both species.

Goal

Develop a reproducible workflow that converts raw drone footage into ecologically meaningful metrics of flocks (composition, spatial distribution, and dynamics). Data: videos of ~ 30 flocks of 20 up to several hundred birds collected over two days on Terschelling in spring 2025, with additional footage planned for spring 2026.

Tasks

• Generate training & test sets — annotate birds in videos/images.
• Build classification pipeline — develop and validate video/image-processing algorithm to distinguish species.
• Orthorectify & georeference — create workflow to orthorectify and georeference videos/images, and map classified bird positions to real-world coordinates.
• Produce ecological outputs & analyses — compute flock composition, density, spatial distribution, and temporal dynamics (questions to be specified).

Who are you

• An independent, assertive, and motivated MSc student.
• Strong background in geoinformation science, ideally with experience in image processing.
• Some interest in wildlife ecology and birds.

What we offer you

• An interesting and relevant challenge with unique data.
• Advice and expertise on the ecological background and theory.
• Dialogue and feedback on your ideas and methods.

Practical information

• Type: MSc Internship
• Duration: ~ 5 months (start and end can be discussed)
• Location: Wageningen
• Contact: Jan Geisler, PhD-candidate, UvA/IBED & NIOO-KNAW (j.geisler@nioo.knaw.nl)