Livestock Tracking

Contact: Dr Jamie Barwick (jbarwic2@une.edu.au)

GPS tracking is becoming increasingly common as a research tool for monitoring livestock activity. UNETracker is a low-cost, store-on-board GPS collar that can be deployed in large numbers for monitoring stock movement. An assessment of positional accuracy of UNEtracker showed a mean error from actual receiver position of 4.14 metres with a standard deviation of 3.04 metres.

Results demonstrated 99.9% of points fell within 20 and 97.3% within 10 metres of the known point. A Livestock Hour Index (LHI) is defined and used as a means of quantifying and mapping the spatially-registered residency time of livestock. Integration of LHI data with maps of photosynthetically-active biomass is demonstrated to illustrate the potentially significant interpretation power of integrating datasets.

See a detailed description of UNEtracker.