In cooperation with the The Bavarian State Institute of Forestry (LWF) and the LMU (Department of Statistics), we investigate interactions between wildlife and human activities and its interactions with vegetation in a temperate forest ecosystem of Northern Bavaria. Data have been collected since 2020 using camera traps. In this research project, an active learning tool is utilized to classify images by wildlife species, facilitating the efficient and cost-effective handling of a large amount of image data. We will apply this novel approach to address two current challenges in forestry practice: Wildlife monitoring and evidence-based visitor management. The potential of long-term datasets of spatio-temporal dynamics of human and wildlife activities will be demonstrated.
The study area is the Veldensteiner Forest which is representative for Bavaria in terms of interest groups (forestry, tourism, conservationists, hunters) and wildlife species (ungulates, top-predators, meso-carnivores, neozoa).
The project is funded by the Board of Forestry Research of the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism.
Please feel free to contact us for additional information or if you are interested in potential cooperations.