Working in the Benthic Habitat Research Group: From the Baltic to the Arctic and Beyond
Saulė Medelytė

Researchers in the Benthic Habitat Research Group at the Lithuanian Marine Research Institute mainly focus on three topics: habitat mapping, benthic ecological functions and benthic ecological status. We use a variety of research methods (acoustics, underwater video, species distribution modelling, in situ observations, unmanned aerial systems and deep learning) to address a range of scientific problems. The Benthic Habitat Research Group has experience of working in a wide range of seas (Norwegian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Arctic), but our main focus is on the Baltic Sea region and the Curonian Lagoon. During this seminar, the latest work of the Benthic Habitats Research Group will be presented, with emphasis on work in which the seminar speaker has been actively involved, such as the application of underwater imagery for the description of upper sublittoral benthic communities in ice-covered and ice-free Arctic fjords, biotope mapping in the Lithuanian coastal area and the application of deep learning semantic segmentation models for the automatic quantification of biotope features.

Editing 3D Point Clouds Using VR
Kindrat Beregovyi

Point clouds are a common type of data encountered in remote sensing and creating digital twins of real-world objects and locations. They are acquired using technologies such as lidar, multibeam sonar, and photogrammetry. However, due to their inherent 3D nature, and lack of solid surfaces, viewing and editing point clouds using traditional 2D interfaces, such as an ordinary monitor, keyboard, and mouse can be challenging. We have developed a virtual reality application that addresses these challenges and streamlines the task of cleaning and annotating point cloud data.