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New tools for environmental annotation of animal movement tracks at the ABoVE domain and beyond
Gil
Bohrer, Ohio State University, bohrer.17@osu.edu
(Presenter)
Sarah
C.
Davidson, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, sdavidson@orn.mpg.de
Scott
LaPoint, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia Univ., sdlapoint@gmail.com
Natalie
Boelman, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia Univ., nboelman@ldeo.columbia.edu
Martin
Wikelski, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, wikelski@orn.mpg.de
Climate and the Earth's land-surface and changing in the Arctic and globally. The impact of climate and land-surface changes on wildlife is difficult to assess, as they typically occur over decades, while wildlife monitoring programs have been in place for relatively short periods. Further challenges stem from the lack of uniformity in animal movement data collection approaches and methods. To analyze the impact of long-term changes in weather and habitat conditions on wildlife movements in the ABoVE domain, we built an archive of avian, predator and ungulate movements throughout the region. The archive is compiled and hosted in Movebank (www.movebank.org), a free, web-based service for managing animal movement data. Using Movebank allows us to manage data from multiple sources within a single database while supporting project-specific data security, terms of use, and access. By importing the data to the Movebank database, they are converted to a uniform metadata, reviewed for quality and completeness, and made easily accessible for analysis through the R package 'move'.
An integral part of Movebank, the Env-DATA System allows easy annotation of these and related time-location records with hundreds of environmental variables provided by global remote sensing and weather data products, including MODIS Land, Snow and Ice products, the ECMWF and NARR weather reanalyses, and others. Recent developments in Env-DATA allow users to receive annotated raster data, and to compare these with observed movement tracks that were annotated using the same remote sensing dataset, and using the same QA and interpolation method. Users can also annotate modelled tracks to test hypotheses about the movement's interactions with the environment. The package R-MoveWindSpeed was recently developed to allow interpretation of atmospheric conditions from high-frequency GPS observations in flying-soaring birds. Environmental data interpreted from the track, combined with data from remote sensing and weather reanalysis can help elucidate the impacts of climate change on animal movement, in the Arctic and beyond.
Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 20
Session Assigned: Wildlife and Ecosystem Services
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