Data from: Modelling flight heights of lesser black-backed gulls and great skuas from GPS: a Bayesian approach ...

Wind energy generation is increasing globally, and associated environmental impacts must be considered. The risk of seabirds colliding with offshore wind turbines is influenced by flight height, and flight height data usually come from observers on boats, making estimates in daylight in fine weather...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ross-Smith, Viola H., Thaxter, Chris B., Masden, Elizabeth A., Shamoun-Baranes, Judy, Burton, Niall H. K., Wright, Lucy J., Rehfisch, Mark M., Johnston, Alison
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2017
Subjects:
Larus fuscus
environmental impact assessment
Collision risk
Stercorarius skua
state-space model
Great skua
offshore wind farm
Renewable energy
Lesser Black-backed Gull
GPS tracking
Lesser black-backed gull
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dp2ms
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.dp2ms
Description
Summary:Wind energy generation is increasing globally, and associated environmental impacts must be considered. The risk of seabirds colliding with offshore wind turbines is influenced by flight height, and flight height data usually come from observers on boats, making estimates in daylight in fine weather. GPS tracking provides an alternative and generates flight height information in a range of conditions, but the raw data have associated error. Here, we present a novel analytical solution for accommodating GPS error. We use Bayesian state-space models to describe the flight height distributions and the error in altitude measured by GPS for lesser black-backed gulls and great skuas, tracked throughout the breeding season. We also examine how location and light levels influence flight height. Lesser black-backed gulls flew lower by night than by day, indicating that this species would be less likely to encounter turbine blades at night, when birds’ ability to detect and avoid them might be reduced. Gulls flew ... : Lesser Black-backed Gull flight height dataThis file was created with R. 'Bird.id', 'date_time', 'latitude', 'longitude', 'altitude', 'positiondop' and 'speed' were collected by GPS tags. 'Positiondop' is dilution of precision. 'Altitude' is measured in m and 'speed' in km/h. 'Marine' denotes observations over land (0) or sea (1), derived from overlaying the GPS measurements on a map in ArcGIS. 'Coastal' donates observations at sea but within 200 m of the coast (1) or further from the coast (0), again derived in ArcGIS. Tidal data ('tidal.state' in m) were from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (https://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/online_delivery/ntslf/), using tide gauge from Harwich. Surface elevation ('land_height' in m) was obtained from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission 90 m digital elevation data (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/), aggregated at the 1 km square level. Sunrise and sunset information was obtained using the NOAA Sunrise/Sunset Calculator ...

Similar Items