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Tips for Analyzing Trail Camera Photos

4/17/2017

12 Comments

 
Content by Michael Havrda, edited by Apryle Craig

An increasing number of researchers are using trail cameras as a non-invasive method to study wildlife. Trail cameras are easily deployed by citizen scientists and collect data round-the-clock, giving them an edge on direct observation studies. It's easy to end up with thousands of photos, but don't be overwhelmed. Here are a few tips to organize and analyze your trail camera photos:
Researcher attaching trail camera to tree
  • Record detailed site data: Keep track of how long cameras were deployed, GPS coordinates for them, and any site covariates you may want later (I keep all of this in an Excel sheet) - things such as deployment duration are critical for occupancy analysis, etc. Here is a basic datasheet for trail cameras.
  • Get organized: Save the photos into separate folders for each deployment (i.e. CameraSite1, CameraSite2, etc.). I name my folders after whatever sample unit the camera was in.
  • Never delete ANY photos, even if they're blanks/misfires, etc. You can always exclude them from analysis later, but always keep the data in its rawest form. 
  • Back up your data: Save them to your computer, an external hard drive, a second external hard drive, a cloud, a second cloud...okay, mainly joking here, but build redundancy into your system! The worst thing that can happen is you only save your data to one place. I personally save them to my laptop, a personal external drive, and an external drive I keep at UW. My techs also usually download the photos from the cameras they manage onto their own computers.
  • Choosing software: There are lots of programs you can download onto your computer to catalog your photos (note that usually you'll need a second software program for analysis, such as R). I use eMammal which is not free. Carolyn uses CPW Photo Warehouse (which is free) and works great. There is also a newer R package (CamTrapR) but I have no experience with it.
  • Auto-ID or image recognition? Currently, there are no packages that can look through the photos and ID animals  This is something a lot of people would love, and some of the technology is in the works, but as far as we know, nothing has been released yet.
  • Think ahead before you commit: Have an idea of what type of analysis you want to do and what program you're going to use before you start cataloging and organizing photos - sometimes different analysis types (or programs) want the data in different formats.

Do you have any additional tips? Feel free to email them to Apryle at uw [dot] edu and I will review them and add them as time permits. 
12 Comments
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Anthony Crouch
6/25/2019 12:57:09 am

Thanks for the valuable information. Is it also a good practice to have the trail camera in a setting where there's no non-relevant movements i.e. leaves falling, tree branch movements? Like to avoid capturing unnecessary details?

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Anthony Crouch
6/25/2019 01:04:55 am

Also guys, what do you think about the Browning Strike Force trail camera? It's said to be one of the best so if you wanna check the article out then please do (https://www.outeroptics.com/best-trail-cameras/). Many thanks

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8/9/2021 05:12:39 am

by Michael Havrda 4/17/2017
What is the most published trail camera data concerning units
animals per trap night?
animals per time such as animals seen at night in 1 month? animals per hour?
I want to document animal use over many years at a habitat restoration site at Rio Grande Nature Center State Park?

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