Welcome to Acta Prataculturae Sinica ! Today is Share:

Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2023, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (5): 71-82.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2022234

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Monitoring of rodent damage areas in grassland using unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing technology

Rui HUA(), Daerhan BAO, Rui DONG, Zhuang-sheng TANG, Bin CHU, Yuan-yuan HAO, Li-min HUA()   

  1. College of Prataculture Science,Gansu Agricultural University,Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of the Ministry of Education,Engineering and Technology Research Center for Alpine Rodent Pest Control,National Forestry and Grassland Administration,Lanzhou 730070,China
  • Received:2022-05-25 Revised:2022-07-02 Online:2023-05-20 Published:2023-03-20
  • Contact: Li-min HUA

Abstract:

Rodent pests are the greatest and most widespread biological problem affecting pastoral land in China and their impact can reach ‘disaster’ level. Obtaining accurate data for rodent-damaged areas in grassland is a priority for evaluating the degree of pest damage and for devising pest management strategies. At present, survey grid and mapping methods are the main methods used to identify rodent-damaged areas in grassland. However, both of those methods have problems in terms of low efficiency and poor accuracy, so they do not meet the requirements for precise management of grassland pests. According to the principles of ecology and statistics, we used unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology and a stratified sampling method to detect damage areas from plateau pika, a dominant rodent pest on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. These trials were conducted at four townships in Maqu County in Gansu Province. First, we selected the primary investigation area according to its suitability for rodents. Then, the first survey area was divided according to different habitat types into secondary survey plots, and each plot was divided into a grid. A certain number of quadrats in the secondary sample plots was randomly sampled, each as a three-level sample with a UAV survey. According to the average area of rodent pest damage across multiple quadrats, the damaged area in each secondary plot was calculated. The areas of damage in all the secondary plots were added to obtain the total pest-damaged area in the primary investigation area. The total area of grassland in the test area was 4.6×105 ha, the area suitable for plateau pika was 2.5×105 ha, and the area of plateau pika damage in the test area was 1.05×104 ha. There were 50 sampling sites in total, and each site had an area of 1 ha. Taking one site as a sample, it takes one person 20 min to complete the work in terms of UAV flying and image interpretation. Compared with the grid survey method and mapping method, this new method can detect areas of rodent damage in grassland on a larger scale because it is more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective.

Key words: rodent pest on grassland, damaged grassland area, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), stratified sampling