Data from: Evaluating the target‐tracking performance of scanning avian radars by augmenting data with simulated echoes ...

• Main Authors: Urmy, Samuel, Warren, Joseph
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: aeroecology; common terns; radar ornithology; roseate terns; target tracking; Gull Island; Sterna hirundo
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3n5tb2rd2; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.3n5tb2rd2

1. Small scanning radars have been used for many years to track the movements of insects, birds, and bats. While the ability to track multiple flying animals simultaneously has numerous applications in basic ecology and applied conservation, translating radar tracks into accurate animal densities and fluxes requires estimates of detection and tracking probabilities. These can be challenging to determine, especially in environments with variable background clutter. 2. In order to assess radar tracking probabilities, we added echoes from simulated bird tracks to sequences of scans collected with an X-band marine radar at a colony of common and roseate terns (Sterna hirundo and S. dougallii) on Great Gull Island, New York, USA in the summers of 2014 and 2015. Automated detection, classification, and tracking algorithms were used to extract the trajectories of terns from the radar data. The proportion of simulated tracks recovered by these procedures could then be used to estimate the tracking probabilities for ...