THE DELAWARE WATERFOWL TRACKER
Date
2019-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The state of Delaware is in the middle of the Atlantic Flyway of migratory waterfowl. This poses a problem for the poultry industry because waterfowl are the primary reservoir for avian influenza, which threatens the health of commercial poultry. When waterfowl migrate through and overwinter within Delaware, Delawarean poultry are at risk of exposure to the virus. Supplying industry stakeholders with locations of waterfowl can help improve their surveillance and biosecurity efforts. I created the Delaware Waterfowl Tracker as an interactive web application that provides maps of the distribution and density of overwintering migratory waterfowl in Delaware and the surrounding region. I developed the app using protocols that were used to develop the California Waterfowl Tracker, a similar web application developed to produce maps of waterfowl in California. I used weather surveillance radar data from the Dover (KDOX) radar to quantify waterfowl distributions by sampling them in the air as they take off for evening feeding flights during November through March of 2008-2016.. I built Boosted Regression Tree statistical models in R to predict radar-observed waterfowl distributions based on environmental and geographic variables (e.g. temperature, land cover, proximity to the Delaware coast) and produce maps of predicted waterfowl distributions throughout the MD and DE portions of the Delmarva Peninsula for each month and year combination, which are available to view on the web app.
Description
Keywords
Wildlife ecology, Waterfowl, Tracker