The proliferation of relatively affordable off-the-shelf drones offers great opportunities for wildlife monitoring and conservation. Similarly the recent reduction in the cost of thermal infrared cameras also offers new promise in this field, as they have the advantage over conventional RGB cameras of being able to distinguish animals based on their body heat and being able to detect animals at night. However, the use of drone-mounted thermal infrared cameras comes with several technical challenges. In this article, we address some of these issues, namely thermal contrast problems due to heat from the ground, absorption and emission of thermal infrared radiation by the atmosphere, obscuration by vegetation, and optimizing the flying height of drones for a best balance between covering a large area and being able to accurately image and identify animals of interest. We demonstrate the application of these methods with a case study using field data and make the first ever detection of the critically endangered riverine rabbit (Bunolagus monticularis) in thermal infrared data. We provide a web-tool so that the community can easily apply these techniques to other studies (http://www.astro.ljmu.ac.uk/aricburk/uav_calc/).

A significant fraction of the total photospheric light in nearby galaxy clusters is thought to be contained within the diffuse intracluster light (IC

Changes in precipitation characteristics directly affect society through their impacts on drought and floods, hydro-dams, and urban drainage systems. Global warming increases the water holding capacity of the atmosphere and thus the risk of heavy precipitation. Here, daily precipitation records from over 700 Chinese stations from 1956 to 2005 are analyzed. The results show a significant shift from light to heavy precipitation over eastern China. An optimal fingerprinting analysis of simulations from 11 climate models driven by different combinations of historical anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use, and ozone) and natural (volcanic and solar) forcings indicates that anthropogenic forcing on climate, including increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs), has had a detectable contribution to the observed shift toward heavy precipitation. Some evidence is found that anthropogenic aerosols (AAs) partially offset the effect of the GHG forcing, resulting in a weaker shift toward heavy precipitation in simulations that include the AA forcing than in simulations with only the GHG forcing. In addition to the thermodynamic mechanism, strengthened water vapor transport from the adjacent oceans and by midlatitude westerlies, resulting mainly from GHG-induced warming, also favors heavy precipitation over eastern China. Further GHG-induced warming is predicted to lead to an increasing shift toward heavy precipitation, leading to increased urban flooding and posing a significant challenge for mega-cities in China in the coming decades. Future reductions in AA emissions resulting from air pollution controls could exacerbate this tendency toward heavier precipitation.

Accurate and precise population estimates form the basis of conservation action but are lacking for many arboreal species due to the high costs and difficulty in surveying these species. Recently, researchers have started to use drones to obtain data on animal distribution and density. In this study, we compared ground and drone counts for spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) at their sleeping sites using a custom-built drone fitted with a thermal infrared (TIR) camera. We demonstrated that a drone with a TIR camera can be successfully employed to determine the presence and count the number of spider monkeys in a forested area. Using a concordance analysis, we found high agreement between ground and drone counts for small monkey subgroups (10 individuals), with drone counts being higher than the corresponding ground counts in 83% of surveys. We could identify additional individuals from TIR drone footage due to a greater area covered compared to ground surveys. We recommend using TIR drones for surveys of spider monkey sleeping sites and discuss current challenges to implementation.

Hierarchical assembly within clusters of galaxies is tied directly to the evolution of the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), which dominate the stellar light in the centres of rich clusters. In this paper, we investigate the number of mergers on to BCGs in 14 X-ray-selected clusters over the redshift range 0.8 < z < 1.4 using HST imaging data. We find significant differences in the numbers of companion galaxies to BCGs between the clusters in our sample, indicating that BCGs in similar mass clusters can have very different merging histories. Within a 50 kpc radius around the BCGs we find an average of 6.45 ± 1.15 companion galaxies with mass ratios (companion:BCG) between 1 : 1 and 1 : 20. The infalling companions show a 50/50 split between major (1 : 1–1 : 2) and minor (1 : 3–1 : 20) mergers. When compared to similar work using lower redshift clusters, these results demonstrate that both major and minor merging were more common in the past. Since the dynamical time-scales for merging on to the BCG are relatively short compared with the look-back time to z ∼ 1, our results suggest that the BCG stellar mass may increase by as much as 1.8 times since z = 1. However, the growth rate of BCGs will be substantially less if stripped material from nearby companions ends up in the diffuse intracluster light.

Search and rescue (SAR) is a vital line of defense against unnecessary loss of life. However, in a potentially hazardous environment, it is important to balance the risks associated with SAR action. Drones have the potential to help with the efficiency, success rate and safety of SAR operations as they can cover large or hard to access areas quickly. The addition of thermal cameras to the drones provides the potential for automated and reliable detection of people in need of rescue. We performed a pilot study with a thermal-equipped drone for SAR applications in Morecambe Bay. In a variety of realistic SAR scenarios, we found that we could detect humans who would be in need of rescue, both by the naked eye and by a simple automated method. We explore the current advantages and limitations of thermal drone systems, and outline the future path to a useful system for deployment in real-life SAR.