Researchers use weather radar to track migrating waterfowl, avian influenza

Date: January 18, 2017
Source: University of Delaware

University of Delaware researchers are part of an effort that will use weather radar to identify wetland hotspots used by waterfowl during the winter, which in turn can alert poultry growers about the potential risk of avian influenza to their farms.

UD is partnering with the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on the research, which will study wetlands in the Central Valley of California during the winter.

The researchers are able to identify the birds' location based on their well synchronized take-off movements.

"In the case of waterfowl, they engage in feeding flights in the winter. They'll roost in the wetlands during the day and they fly out to agricultural fields -- primarily flooded rice fields in California -- at night. When they take off and fly into the radar, we get an instant snapshot of where they were on the ground. That's how we map their distributions," said Jeff Buler, assistant professor in UD's Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology.



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Nation's weather radar network used to track bird migration at night

Date:June 30, 2015

Source:University of Oklahoma

Summary:Using the nation's weather radar network, two doctoral students have developed a technique for forecasting something other than the weather: the orientation behavior of birds as they migrate through the atmosphere at night. 

he students have discovered a way to use the latest dual-polarization radar upgrade to measure broad-scale flight orientation of nocturnal migrant birds -- a promising development for biologists and bird enthusiasts.The approach to the problem paired Phillip M. Stepanian, a meteorology and electrical engineering student, and Kyle G. Horton, a biology student, on the study that demonstrates how the upgraded national weather radar network contributed to the understanding of animal flight orientation behavior at a large spatial scale. Stepanian and Horton may be the first to develop a practical application of polarimetric radar data for tracking migrant birds during nighttime flight.

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