Whooping Cranes!

What is the purpose of this project?

The Whooping Crane nesting area in and around Wood Buffalo National Park is vast, but because the nesting period is short (only a few weeks), it is crucial that we mobilize enough people to help review ~100,000 images so we can confirm possible nests during this period. We are providing volunteers with new 2021 imagery and will use the “wisdom of the crowd” to identify possible nests that will later be confirmed by the field team through the aerial checks. We hope this method will help us to detect new Whooping Crane nests and newly colonized areas! As we do not expect to find a lot of nests in any given year (~100 nests each year), we are combining this new 2021 imagery with images known to contain nests (confirmed by aerial surveys in previous years). We have found by combining new imagery and old imagery it lowers the chances of overcounting and undercounting nests.

How is this helping in the conservation of Whooping Cranes?

The nesting season for Whooping Cranes is quite short, but the area in which they are nesting is quite large and it is difficult and expensive for field teams to fly over the entire area to manually search for cranes. By being able to identify nests through satellite images and then send our field teams out to more specific locations (rather than scan the entire habitat), we may be able to monitor the population more efficiently. This is important when managing a protected species. It will also allow us to track the expansion of the population as it colonizes new areas within in and outside of Wood Buffalo National Park. That information will assist in identification of habitats that need additional protection or management.

You can learn more about how to contribute to crane conservation by visiting the Calgary Zoo or International Crane Foundation.

How big is the area covered in one image?

You will be looking at image tiles that measure 150 meters on each side, covering a total area of 2.25 hectares. Every tile, including all the images in these slides and in the training workflow, are the same size. Depending on the prominent landscape features in each tile, this may be deceiving and look more or less zoomed in than others but trust us that all images are exactly the same size!

We understand that these images may not look like they have the best resolution, but we have zoomed in a lot when creating the tiles, so you won’t have to! A Whooping Crane nest is generally circular or slightly oblong and is about 1-2 m in diameter. These satellite images have a pixel resolution of about ~30-50 cm, so at the current scale of the image, you should be able to see a nest if it is there and you won’t have to spend too much time zooming and panning around the image.

Where and when are these images taken?

These images were taken during the incubation period of the Whooping Crane population in Wood Buffalo National Park (WBNP) and adjacent areas in the Northwest Territories and Alberta, Canada. The images you see include a combination of new images from WBNP (May 2021), where we do not know what the image contains, and nests confirmed by aerial flights from 2017 to 2019. Click here to see a map of the Aransas-Wood Buffalo population's range.

Wood Buffalo National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site, the biggest national park in Canada and the 2nd largest terrestrial protected area in the world. Within WBNP, the Whooping Crane summer range is designated as a RAMSAR wetland site of international importance. WBNP is the centrepiece of the world’s largest area of protected boreal forest (along with adjacent parks in Alberta) and a great place to visit with camping, hiking trails and endless opportunities to explore (when the time is right!)

To learn more of WBNP, visit:

Parks Canada: Wood Buffalo National Park
Video: Introduction to Wood Buffalo National Park
Video: Parks Canada Insider about Whooping Cranes in Wood Buffalo National Park
Visiting the Canadian Northwest Territories?

Why am I seeing what looks like the same nest multiple times?

Along with the new images that we are collecting throughout May 2021 in WBNP to detect currently nesting Whooping Cranes, we are also including images with confirmed nests collected from 2017 to 2019. Because there are fewer than 100 Whooping Crane nests each year and we are expecting to show you more than 100k new images, we will be showing you images of the same nest more than once to provide you feedback throughout the campaign on whether you are correctly identifying already known nests or not. In images containing the same nest, the location of the nest will vary so you won't see the exact same image twice.

Is it possible that I am seeing more than one nest in a single image?

Due to the distance between different Whooping Crane nests, there should never be more than one crane nest visible per image. Multiple bright white features in a single image are likely to be things like bare ground, snow or islands.

Why don’t you want me to mark where I think the nesting crane is in the image?

The area covered in each tile is quite small (150 m x 150 m). Due to the large breeding territories of these beautiful big white birds and the small size of the image, you won’t be seeing more than one nesting crane per image. Because there won’t be more than one nest in an image, we do not need you to mark where the nest is. It will be clear to us what you thought was a nest and where it is.

I am not sure if what I am seeing is a nest or not

If you are unsure if an image contains a nest or not, but are leaning towards thinking it might, please click “Nesting crane in image”. Each image will be viewed multiple times, so we will tally the votes and give more weight to images receiving more votes. There is wisdom in the crowd!

The image I see is black, blurred, poor quality or covered completely by clouds

If an image is poor quality and you think it would be impossible to see a crane even if there was one, please click “No nesting crane in image”. You may also see some images that are completely black - this is how the satellite image was split up into smaller tiles, resulting in some subjects having no data. Please also click "No nesting crane in image" when you see this.

I keep seeing "Already Seen" banners on the images, even after refreshing

When you begin seeing "Already Seen" banners, please try the following steps: refresh the page, try emptying the browser cache, exit the current IP session and start over, or try classifying on another day. This is especially important when we are getting near the end of a campaign and just a few images remain to be classified.

If you have tried all those steps, and you continue to see "Already Seen" banners on images, then you have completed the current imagery! We will be continuously uploading new imagery over the course of the campaign as we receive it, so please check back in later for more. We will also be posting updates on the Announcement Talk Board whenever new images are uploaded, so please make sure you have your settings turned on to receive notifications for when we post there.