Study of the state of populations of rare and hunting species of geese and brants in the North of Kazakhstan and development of a monitoring system and a set of measures for their conservation

Budgetary program "Development of Science", subprogram "Grant financing of scientific research in 2018-2021." Science Committee MES RK

Project leader: Koshkin M.A., PhD, Zuban I.A., master.

Project executors: Koshkin M.A., Doctor PhD, Zuban I.A., Master, Vilkov V.S., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Panchenko V.Yu., Master, Fomin I.A., master, Kalashnikov M.N., Zhadan K.S., master.

Terms of execution: 2018-2020

Amount of financing: 24,000,000 tenge.

The goal of the project: obtaining new information and data that can make significant adjustments to the existing understanding of the state of geese and brants nesting and migrating through the territory of Kazakhstan, as well as developing modern methods for studying their populations.

Expected results: - modern data on the number of globally threatened and hunting species of geese and brants;

- key points at nesting sites and migratory stops in northern Kazakhstan;

- the method of catching and marking geese and brants in the conditions of Northern Kazakhstan;

- a set of limiting factors affecting geese and brants at nesting and migration stops;

- up-to-date data on the places of migratory stops, wintering and nesting sites, timing and strategies of migration of geese and brants;

- data on the spatial and biotopic distribution of gray geese during the nesting period, oomorphological and nesting indicators;
- guidelines for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in bird monitoring;

- software implementation of data preprocessing algorithms, software implementation of a multilayer neural network, which allows you to recognize objects of a given type (birds of a certain species);

- a prototype of a software package for processing photographs of birds.

Based on the results of the research, it is planned to write and publish at least 3 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals in the RSCI and Scopus databases.

Description of the project: conducting a comprehensive study of populations of nesting and migrating geese and brants using the latest technologies, which will make it possible to make significant additions to the existing ideas about their functioning, develop guidelines for organizing and conducting counts, and also determine an algorithm for the dependence of the success of the existence of these birds on various factors, including the influence of human activities.

Project objectives:

- development and implementation of methods for catching geese and brants, taking into account the conditions of Northern Kazakhstan;

- monitoring the number of geese and brants at key points of migration stops in Northern Kazakhstan;

- study of factors affecting the nesting population of the gray goose, as well as migrating geese and brants to determine their limiting effect;

- trapping and tagging (with satellite transmitters, rings and collars) nesting and migrating geese and geese;

- identification of the features of migration routes and the migration strategy of birds, key territories on the routes of spring and autumn migrations and wintering grounds;

- study of the peculiarities of aerial photography of bird clusters using unmanned aerial vehicles and prepare recommendations for their use;

- development of an algorithm for the classification of photographing objects (geese and brants) for the development of a program for decoding images on its basis;

- monitoring the number of the nesting population of the gray goose, to study the peculiarities of nesting biology, spatial-biotopic distribution and factors influencing them;

- preparation of a list of new key territories for globally endangered species of geese and brants, for assigning them the status of Key Bird Areas of International Importance.