Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MigrationRadar (Elucidating continental-scale patterns of bird migration with weather radars)
Reporting period: 2019-08-01 to 2021-07-31
Animal migration is a wide-spread phenomenon, which allows animals of many different taxa to take advantage of seasonal variation in resource abundance. Billions of mammals, birds, fish, insects and other animals make seasonal round trips between breeding sites and non-breeding (wintering) sites each year, with huge effects on communities and ecological systems. Migration of course also entails costs, such as the cost of transportation to distant sites. Flying is an energetically comparably cheap way of transportation and consequently billions of birds, insects and bats migrate across the globe each year.
Since migration often involves long distance movements it is a difficult behaviour to observe and study, especially for flying migrants. In the case of small songbirds, which migrate at night and at high altitudes, their migratory flights have been nearly impossible to observe directly. However, recent developments in the field of radar biology have now made it possible to use data collected from continental networks of weather radars to study the migration patterns of songbirds and insects over very large scales and over long time periods.
The goal of this project was to obtain and analyze data on animal movement patterns from the European weather radar network to map the migration of flying animals over Europe and analyze several aspects of flight behavior during migration. Due to Covid related lockdowns across Europe access to, and processing of, the weather radar data was delayed. Preliminary data from Europe was analyzed, and together with already available data from the US weather radar network some preliminary analysis of flight behaviour was made.
Since migration often involves long distance movements it is a difficult behaviour to observe and study, especially for flying migrants. In the case of small songbirds, which migrate at night and at high altitudes, their migratory flights have been nearly impossible to observe directly. However, recent developments in the field of radar biology have now made it possible to use data collected from continental networks of weather radars to study the migration patterns of songbirds and insects over very large scales and over long time periods.
The goal of this project was to obtain and analyze data on animal movement patterns from the European weather radar network to map the migration of flying animals over Europe and analyze several aspects of flight behavior during migration. Due to Covid related lockdowns across Europe access to, and processing of, the weather radar data was delayed. Preliminary data from Europe was analyzed, and together with already available data from the US weather radar network some preliminary analysis of flight behaviour was made.
Throughout the project I have worked on obtaining and quality controlling animal migration data from the European weather radar network. I have also developed tools and analysis pathways for the extracting different kinds of flight behaviour metrics from the data, and set up preliminary comparisons between the avian migration systems in Europe and the US. These results will be finalized into open access publications as well as be presented at future conferences.
Preliminary results highlight the wide range of applications possible with the access to large scale radar data on the movements of animals in the airspace. There is a wide range of questions within animal migration research that can be asked, but also many applied conservation and human-animal interactions issues can be addressed when we get a better view of where and when animals are in the airspace. Preliminary results show details of flight behaviour of the entire assembly of bird migrants in different migration systems, as well as addresses applied questions such as how nocturnal migrants are affected by artificial light pollution. I also investigated how animal movement data from weather radars can be used together with other data sources to understand bird strike risks at airports.