Linking remote animal detection and movement data with macrosystem environmental datasets and networks

 

Workshop Summary

 

Technological advances in remote data collection of animal presence and movement have allowed the accumulation of large quantities of location data of individuals or species as well as macrosystem-level environmental data. Examples of technology improving the specificity of animal data are acoustic recordings, camera-traps, radiotelemetry, and geolocators. In addition, remote sensing from satellites and aircraft, reanalysis models and observation networks are providing large quantities of environmental data. These new technologies are allowing animal ecologists to collect distribution and/or fine-scaled movement data on more suites of organisms at broader scales than previously imagined. These advances in technology, along with increased connectivity over the web, have allowed a broader involvement of the public in collecting animal or environmental data. The struggle in many cases is to link the animal-observations information being collected by citizens, and local groups, as well as national and international agencies, to relevant large-scale environmental datasets. 

 

The explicitly inter-disciplinary nature of the workshop proposed here will foster linkages and collaborations that can result in alleviating technical barriers for scaling the information from the animal observation to the macrosystem scale. Such barriers still limit researchers from broadening the scale and scope of their research. We propose to hold a two-day workshop that focuses on how new technologies and capabilities being used to investigate the distribution and movement of animals can be linked to environmental state, flux, and change at the landscape scale. We will bring together experts in the field of remote sensing of the environment and animal detection techniques with the goal of integrating the various technologies and lay the foundation for a review paper on the potential of these combined techniques to answer questions in the fields of ecology and conservation biology.

 

The workshop aims to address the following questions:

 

• What is the current state of linking broad-scale environmental data with dynamic animal distributions and movements?

 

• Is it possible to use current technology and capabilities to monitor animals at broad landscape, regional, or continental scales?

 

• How can fine-scale individual movement data inform coarser species’ detection efforts?

 

• What role can volunteer networks play in data acquisition of either animal or environmental data?

 

• What are the guiding principles and pitfalls in upscaling/downscaling movement and environmental data to link these available environmental data from satellites, LiDAR, weather stations, reanalysis models, and other remote sensing platforms to animal movement data in ways to answer important ecological questions?

 

 

For help with logistical questions, please reach out to Justin Cooper at cooperw@si.edu. If you have questions about the substance of the meeting, please contact Dr. Luther at dluther@gmu.edu.