Aerial surveys and annotated counts of black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses in their colonies across South Georgia during the 2023/2024 season

This dataset comprises aerial surveys using remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS) and derived annotations of albatrosses in colonies across South Georgia during the 2023/2024 season (austral summer). The dataset includes stitched orthomosaics and digital surface models (DSM), as well as annotated counts of black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses during their breeding season. Counts are assigned to respective colonies within larger sites.

Surveys were conducted as part of an all-island albatross survey carried out every 10 years to monitor albatross trends across South Georgia. Flights were conducted by personnel at BAS and supported by the MV SG Pharos. This project was funded by the following: Friends of South Georgia Island, South Georgia Heritage Trust, Antarctic Research Trust, Peter Smith Charitable Trust for Nature, UK Blue Belt Programme.

Alternate title: Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/02055

Date (Publication): 2025-05-12

Citation identifier: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/02055

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre	Manthorpe, S.J., Mackley, E., & Phillips, R.A.	pdc@bas.ac.uk	Originator

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Keywords

NDGO0001

NERC OAI Harvesting

NERC_DDC

GCMD Parameter Valids

EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Ecological Dynamics > Endangered Species
EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Ecological Dynamics > Indicator Species
EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Ecological Dynamics > Population Dynamics
EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Ecological Dynamics > Range Changes
EARTH SCIENCE > Biosphere > Zoology

BAS Free-text keywords

RPAS
South Georgia
black-browed albatross
grey-headed albatross
monitoring
remotely piloted aerial system

Use limitation: Data supplied under Open Government Licence v3.0 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/.

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Data supplied under Open Government Licence v3.0 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/.

Language: English

Topic category

Biota

Begin date: 2023-11-21

End date: 2023-11-30

Reference system identifier: OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326

Distribution format

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Polar Data Centre - British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
http	http://ramadda.data.bas.ac.uk/repository/entry/show?entryid=56be2d24-16cd-44ca-8f0c-5416dc38214d	GET DATA

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification: INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Data Specification on unknown theme Guidelines

Date

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Statement: Coordinate reference system for ouputs:

Projection: UTM Zone 24S

Horizontal datum: WGS84

Vertical datum: MSL (mean sea level)

For some images, elevation was not retrievable from image metadata and was thus derived from flight logs directly. Flight logs were aligned with images by timestamp to retrieve elevation and then manually inputted into Pix4D for stitching. These are included as additional .csv files. Where colony or flight is null, either the image was not used for stitching or the flight column in the flight log was missing/erroneous and was not used.

For Paryadin South, elevation was not retrievable from the flight logs either, and thus a second subset of the imagery was used, without colonies that were missing elevation values, to derive data without missing values to conduct further analyses.

Some orthomosaics may have some distortion and blurriness, obscuring albatrosses and species-level distinctions in birds.

Some metadata (weather conditions) were not recorded and are thus not included in the UAV flight metadata.