Argos PTT Tracking Database

• Other Authors: AADC (originator), AU/AADC > Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia (resourceProvider)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Australian Ocean Data Network
• Subjects: biota; oceans; ICE EDGES; EARTH SCIENCE; CRYOSPHERE; SEA ICE; ICE EXTENT; ICEBERGS; PACK ICE; OCEAN CURRENTS; OCEAN CIRCULATION; WIND-DRIVEN CIRCULATION; PENGUINS; BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION; ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES; BIRDS; SEALS/SEA LIONS/WALRUSES; MAMMALS; CARNIVORES; BALEEN WHALES; CETACEANS; ALBATROSSES/PETRELS AND ALLIES; ANTARCTIC MARINE LIVING RESOURCES; ANTARCTICA; BIOLOGY; GLACIOLOGY; OCEANOGRAPHY; SATELLITE; SOUTHERN OCEAN; ARGOS > ARGOS Data Collection and Position Location System; OBIS > OCEAN BIOGEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM; IPY > INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR; SCAR-MARBIN > SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network; CAML > CENSUS OF ANTARCTIC MARINE LIFE; COML > CENSUS OF MARINE LIFE; EBA > Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic; AMD/AU; CEOS; AMD; OBIS/AADC; ANTABIF; OCEAN > SOUTHERN OCEAN > MACQUARIE ISLAND; CONTINENT > GEOGRAPHIC REGION > POLAR; HEARD AND MCDONALD ISLANDS; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Admiralty Bay; Weddell; Heard; Dumont d'Urville; Dumont-d'Urville; McDonald Islands; Ramirez; Monolith; Edmonson Point; Magnetic Island; Auster; Inexpressible Island; Shirley Island; Spit Bay; Scullin Monolith; Albatross Island; Taylor Rookery; Auster Rookery; Ufs Island; Dumont d'Urville Base; Dumont-d'Urville Base; Adelie penguin; Antarc*; Antarctic Fur Seal; Antarctica; Australian Antarctic Program; baleen whales; Blue whale; Crabeater Seal; Elephant Seal; Iceberg*; International Polar Year; IPY; Macaroni penguin; Macquarie Island; Ross Seal; Sea ice; Southern Elephant Seal; Weddell Seal; walrus*
• Online Access: https://researchdata.ands.org.au/argos-ptt-tracking-database/685060; https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/DB_Argos_PTT_Tracking; http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/argos/; http://www.argos-system.org//; http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=DB_Argos_PTT_Tracking

According to ARGOS, the position error can vary from 350 metres (class 3) to about 5km or less for a class 1 hit. Most end-users use speed filter and have a degree of confidence on the majority of the filtered data. Most tracked species are marine and one can use a land-sea mask to remove positions that may appear to be on land for the true marine species. Some of the positions will be for taxa that are breeding or resting in their land colonies but these will be very close to the coast. A repository of all ARGOS satellite messages from 1982 to present. Trackers have been used on AWS stations, buoys and numerous species of whales, seals and seabirds. ARGOS is a means of sending data back from PTT devices - Position Tracking Terminals. However, the subject does not necessarily have to be moving - as in the case of the Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), which use ARGOS for relaying meteorological data back to Australia. Animal species that have been or are currently monitored by the Australian Antarctic Program using the ARGOS system include: Grey-headed Albatross Black-browed Albatross Light mantled sooty albatross Australian Fur Seal Antarctic Fur Seal Weddell Seal Ross seal Crabeater seal Southern Elephant Seal Emperor Penguin King Penguin Macaroni Penguin Adelie Penguin Pygmy Blue Whale Locations in which the ARGOS system is/was being used by the Australian Antarctic Program are: Admiralty Bay Albatross Island Almagro Auster Rookery Bechervaise Island Cape Gantheaume Caroline Cove Casey Davis Diego Ramirez Dumont d'Urville, Base Edmonson Point Ildefonso Inexpressible Island Macquarie Island Magnetic Island Pedra Branca Scullin Monolith Shirley Island Spit Bay Taylor Rookery Ufs Island Each day, data is retrieved via telnet client from the ARGOS site in France. A batch process parses the data files and inserts into the Data Centre database by 0800 local time. End-users can subscribe to an email describing the recent data uploads. Web-based tools are provided to filter the data by bounding box, time span and type of message quality. Finally a optional velocity filter can be applied to remove spurious positions that should not be reachable by that particular species. For example, seal data can be filtered for positions that would require speeds in excess of 10 km/hr. The same tool ascribes species, gender, age class and breeding status to each set of data. A separate control allows the filtered data to be published to the general public and/or to OBIS and GBIF via web services. Output products include maps, excel spreadsheets and KML files for mapping data on Google Earth.