Relating weather radar data to migrating waterfowl abundance in the Rainwater Basin of Nebraska
Date
2023-06-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Journal of Wildlife Management
Abstract
Waterfowl migrations are large-scale events that involve millions of birds moving over broad geographic extents, which make them difficult to quantify and study. Historically, wildlife managers have relied mostly on field surveys, such as visual counts from the ground or air that sample at small spatial or temporal extents, or both. Combining field surveys with remote sensing data comprehensively collected over large spatial extents at high temporal frequency may improve the study of migrating waterfowl distributions. We tested the strength of the relationship between broad-scale weather surveillance radar data and fine-scale field surveys of waterfowl abundance at wetlands within the Rainwater Basin of Nebraska, USA, from 2017–2019. Radar reflectivity of waterfowl at the peak exodus of evening flights was positively correlated with diurnal waterfowl count data, although there was unexplained variation in the relationship. The association was also very similar across various time scales ranging from daily to monthly averages of waterfowl abundance. We suggest that human-based ground surveys can calibrate and leverage more comprehensive remote sensing data to get a broad understanding of waterfowl distributions during migration. Several confounding factors, such as spatial displacement between radar and survey observation, individual variation in orientation and body size, and identification of avian species sampled by radar, remain on the path to improving radar-based waterfowl estimates.
Description
This article was originally published in The Journal of Wildlife Management. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22404. © 2023 The Wildlife Society. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.
Keywords
ground survey, migration, Nebraska, NEXRAD, radar, Rainwater Basin, waterfowl
Citation
Liu, B., Kemink, K., Sieges, M., Smolinsky, J., Varner, D., and Buler, J.. 2023. Relating weather radar data to migrating waterfowl abundance in the Rainwater Basin of Nebraska. Journal of Wildlife Management 87:e22404. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22404