what have we learned so far?

When we launched the Aerobotany project in 2016, we were pioneering the use of drone-captured images of the rainforest canopy in online citizen science. Our first big question was simply: WILL THIS WORK? Could we successfully fly the drone over the rainforest and obtain hundreds of high-resolution images per flight? Could these images be used to identify certain species of trees, or spot tree crowns that were flowering, or had shed their leaves during the dry season? Could we engage the interest of online volunteers from across the world in collecting these data?

The answer to all these questions was a resounding YES! During the initial run of Aerobotany on The Zooniverse platform, we uploaded more than 5700 drone-captured images of the rainforest canopy. Over a 3-month period, more than 3000 volunteers helped perform almost 100,000 classifications in total on these images. And the results were illuminating: we discovered that during the dry month of October, more than 3700 individual trees within the 4 square kilometers of rainforest around Refugio Amazonas had shed their leaves, and over 1600 trees were flowering! We also counted over 5000 trees of the Huasaí palm across the area, which is probably the first-ever landscape-scale survey of a single rainforest tree species.

Currently, we are close to launching a new version of Aerobotany that focuses on a single, emblematic species of the Madre de Dios region - the castaña or Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa). This tree is the cornerstone of a sustainable regional economy based on collecting the fallen fruits and shelling the seeds or 'nuts', which are rich in healthy fats and micronutrients, and contribute millions of dollars each year to the livelihoods of Madre de Dios's residents.

During this run of Aerobotany, we have monitored 140 castaña trees in the rainforest around Refugio Amazonas over the past 4 years using the drone. We are using these high-resolution images of individual tree crowns taken every two weeks year-round to answer some critical, basic questions about the castaña tree's basic ecology: When do these trees flower, fruit, drop leaves and flush new leaves? Are they consistent from year-to-year? Are all the trees in synchrony or do they exhibit variation in their patterns?

One of the most exciting objectives of Aerobotany's current focus on Brazil nut trees is our attempt to count the number of visible fruit in the crowns of each focal tree based on the high-resolution drone-captured image. If we are able to do this accurately with the help of thousands of online volunteers, we can create a predictive model that will help Brazil nut collectors across the Madre de Dios region in their planning and logistics, and improve their efficiency. This would be a major part of the solution to the long-term sustainable use of Amazon rainforest resources.

Stay tuned for updates on Aerobotany, and visit our project page Amazon Aerobotany on The Zooniverse!