Adelie penguin occupancy survey of the Rookery Island Group, 2015

• Other Authors: SOUTHWELL, COLIN (hasPrincipalInvestigator), SOUTHWELL, COLIN (processor), EMMERSON, LOUISE (hasPrincipalInvestigator), EMMERSON, LOUISE (processor), Australian Antarctic Data Centre (publisher)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Australian Antarctic Data Centre
• Subjects: biota; oceans; PENGUINS; EARTH SCIENCE; BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION; ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES; BIRDS; BREEDING PRODUCTIVITY; CLIMATE INDICATORS; BIOSPHERIC INDICATORS; COLONIES; GPS RECEIVERS; FIELD SURVEYS; FIELD INVESTIGATION; GEOGRAPHIC REGION > POLAR; CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA; OCEAN > SOUTHERN OCEAN; Giganteus; Rookery Island; Southern Ocean; Adelie penguin; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://researchdata.ands.org.au/adelie-penguin-occupancy-group-2015/945664; https://doi.org/10.4225/15/58fd3fecbbd48; https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/AAS_4088_Adelie_occupancy_Rookery_2015; http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-617536

Fourteen colonies with breeding Adelie colonies were mapped this season in the Rookery Island group between the 29th November and 14th of December 2015. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Etrex30) to record the track. When mapping the perimeter of the subcolonies, generally an average buffer distance of 2.5 meters was maintained between the mapper and breeding birds. However on Gibbney and Rookery Island one of the mappers was mapping at a distance between 3 and 5m. Buffer distances were reduced accordingly for the varying tracks to produce a combined average buffer distance of 2m in the final layer. Given this the boundary mapping for these two islands may vary in accuracy. Note on Gibbney and Giganteus there were at least two subcolonies on both islands that were mapped but the density of breeding birds in these mapped sections was much less than that in the surrounding colonies. Subcolonies were tagged with L at the end of their name in the track files. This will not be shown in the final layer and if information on this is needed then the subcolonies can be identified from the original track data or created shapefiles for the individual subcolonies on the island.