batch_auto_20260713 202607131256465730 BOEM ESP geoESPIS ESPIS@boem.gov Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Automated detection and classification of wildlife targets in digital aerial imagery Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center U.S. Geological Survey This study is an effort to construct a framework that supports machine learning techniques for wildlife surveys using digital aerial imagery. A robust foundation has been developed to advance both scientific and production-ready applications of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) for wildlife surveys by constructing a data pipeline to handle large image datasets, building an annotation dataset of wildlife targets, and using those annotations within AI/ML processes. 892505 U.S. Department of the Interior https://doi.org/10.13039/100012475 USGS-NT-19-04 10.67297/9A1E6E https://boem.gov/awardpages/100334