Mining Antarctic scientific data: a case study

• Main Authors: Ben Raymond, Eric J Woehler
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Casey Station; East Antarctica; Prydz Bay; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.196.6190; http://www.antdiv.gov.au/MediaLibrary/asset/MediaItems/ml_376283948726852_raymond_woehler_adm02.pdf

The Australian Antarctic Data Centre is a web-accessible repository of freely-available Antarctic scientific data. The Data Centre seeks to increase the value and utility of its holdings through data mining analyses and research. We present and discuss analyses of an extensive spatial/temporal database of at-sea observations of seabirds and related physical environmental parameters. Mixture-model based clustering identified two communities of seabirds in the Prydz Bay region of East Antarctica, and characterised their spatial and temporal distributions. The relationships between observations of three seabird species and environmental parameters were explored using predictive logistic models. The parameters of these models were estimated using data from the Prydz Bay region. The generality of the models was tested by applying them to data from a different region (that adjacent to Australia’s Casey station). This approach identified regional differences in the at-sea observations of seabird species. The results of these analyses complement those of at-sea studies of seabirds elsewhere around the Antarctic. They also provide insights into possible data errors that were not readily apparent from direct examination of the data. These analyses enhanced ecological understanding, provided feedback on survey strategy, and highlighted the utility of the repository. 1.