Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS
BACKGROUND: ARGOS satellite telemetry is one of the most widely used methods to track the movements of free-ranging marine and terrestrial animals and is fundamental to studies of foraging ecology, migratory behavior and habitat-use. ARGOS location estimates do not include complete error estimations...
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16060 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/11427/16060/1/Costa_Accuracy_of_ARGOS_Locations_2010.pdf |
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ftunivcapetownir:oai:localhost:11427/16060 2023-05-15T16:05:41+02:00 Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS Costa, Daniel P Robinson, Patrick W Arnould, John P Y Harrison, Autumn-Lynn Simmons, Samantha E Hassrick, Jason L Hoskins, Andrew J Kirkman, Stephen P Oosthuizen, Herman Villegas-Amtmann, Stella 2010 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16060 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/11427/16060/1/Costa_Accuracy_of_ARGOS_Locations_2010.pdf eng eng Public Library of Science University of Cape Town Faculty of Science Animal Demography Unit (ADU) http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/11427/16060/1/Costa_Accuracy_of_ARGOS_Locations_2010.pdf This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 © 2010 Costa et al CC-BY PLoS One http://journals.plos.org/plosone Seals Sea lions Animal behavior Latitude Longitude Animal migration Foraging Marine geology Journal Article 2010 ftunivcapetownir https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 2022-09-13T05:53:55Z BACKGROUND: ARGOS satellite telemetry is one of the most widely used methods to track the movements of free-ranging marine and terrestrial animals and is fundamental to studies of foraging ecology, migratory behavior and habitat-use. ARGOS location estimates do not include complete error estimations, and for many marine organisms, the most commonly acquired locations (Location Class 0, A, B, or Z) are provided with no declared error estimate. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We compared the accuracy of ARGOS locations to those obtained using Fastloc GPS from the same electronic tags on five species of pinnipeds: 9 California sea lions ( Zalophus californianus ), 4 Galapagos sea lions ( Zalophus wollebaeki ), 6 Cape fur seals ( Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus ), 3 Australian fur seals ( A. p. doriferus ) and 5 northern elephant seals ( Mirounga angustirostris ). These species encompass a range of marine habitats (highly pelagic vs coastal), diving behaviors (mean dive durations 2-21 min) and range of latitudes (equator to temperate). A total of 7,318 ARGOS positions and 27,046 GPS positions were collected. Of these, 1,105 ARGOS positions were obtained within five minutes of a GPS position and were used for comparison. The 68 th percentile ARGOS location errors as measured in this study were LC-3 0.49 km, LC-2 1.01 km, LC-1 1.20 km, LC-0 4.18 km, LC-A 6.19 km, LC-B 10.28 km. Conclusions/Significance The ARGOS errors measured here are greater than those provided by ARGOS, but within the range of other studies. The error was non-normally distributed with each LC highly right-skewed. Locations of species that make short duration dives and spend extended periods on the surface (sea lions and fur seals) had less error than species like elephant seals that spend more time underwater and have shorter surface intervals. Supplemental data ( S1 ) are provided allowing the creation of density distributions that can be used in a variety of filtering algorithms to improve the quality of ARGOS tracking data. Article in Journal/Newspaper Elephant Seals University of Cape Town: OpenUCT Galapagos PLoS ONE 5 1 e8677 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
University of Cape Town: OpenUCT |
op_collection_id |
ftunivcapetownir |
language |
English |
topic |
Seals Sea lions Animal behavior Latitude Longitude Animal migration Foraging Marine geology |
spellingShingle |
Seals Sea lions Animal behavior Latitude Longitude Animal migration Foraging Marine geology Costa, Daniel P Robinson, Patrick W Arnould, John P Y Harrison, Autumn-Lynn Simmons, Samantha E Hassrick, Jason L Hoskins, Andrew J Kirkman, Stephen P Oosthuizen, Herman Villegas-Amtmann, Stella Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
topic_facet |
Seals Sea lions Animal behavior Latitude Longitude Animal migration Foraging Marine geology |
description |
BACKGROUND: ARGOS satellite telemetry is one of the most widely used methods to track the movements of free-ranging marine and terrestrial animals and is fundamental to studies of foraging ecology, migratory behavior and habitat-use. ARGOS location estimates do not include complete error estimations, and for many marine organisms, the most commonly acquired locations (Location Class 0, A, B, or Z) are provided with no declared error estimate. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We compared the accuracy of ARGOS locations to those obtained using Fastloc GPS from the same electronic tags on five species of pinnipeds: 9 California sea lions ( Zalophus californianus ), 4 Galapagos sea lions ( Zalophus wollebaeki ), 6 Cape fur seals ( Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus ), 3 Australian fur seals ( A. p. doriferus ) and 5 northern elephant seals ( Mirounga angustirostris ). These species encompass a range of marine habitats (highly pelagic vs coastal), diving behaviors (mean dive durations 2-21 min) and range of latitudes (equator to temperate). A total of 7,318 ARGOS positions and 27,046 GPS positions were collected. Of these, 1,105 ARGOS positions were obtained within five minutes of a GPS position and were used for comparison. The 68 th percentile ARGOS location errors as measured in this study were LC-3 0.49 km, LC-2 1.01 km, LC-1 1.20 km, LC-0 4.18 km, LC-A 6.19 km, LC-B 10.28 km. Conclusions/Significance The ARGOS errors measured here are greater than those provided by ARGOS, but within the range of other studies. The error was non-normally distributed with each LC highly right-skewed. Locations of species that make short duration dives and spend extended periods on the surface (sea lions and fur seals) had less error than species like elephant seals that spend more time underwater and have shorter surface intervals. Supplemental data ( S1 ) are provided allowing the creation of density distributions that can be used in a variety of filtering algorithms to improve the quality of ARGOS tracking data. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Costa, Daniel P Robinson, Patrick W Arnould, John P Y Harrison, Autumn-Lynn Simmons, Samantha E Hassrick, Jason L Hoskins, Andrew J Kirkman, Stephen P Oosthuizen, Herman Villegas-Amtmann, Stella |
author_facet |
Costa, Daniel P Robinson, Patrick W Arnould, John P Y Harrison, Autumn-Lynn Simmons, Samantha E Hassrick, Jason L Hoskins, Andrew J Kirkman, Stephen P Oosthuizen, Herman Villegas-Amtmann, Stella |
author_sort |
Costa, Daniel P |
title |
Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
title_short |
Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
title_full |
Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
title_fullStr |
Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
title_full_unstemmed |
Accuracy of ARGOS locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using Fastloc GPS |
title_sort |
accuracy of argos locations of pinnipeds at-sea estimated using fastloc gps |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2010 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16060 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/11427/16060/1/Costa_Accuracy_of_ARGOS_Locations_2010.pdf |
geographic |
Galapagos |
geographic_facet |
Galapagos |
genre |
Elephant Seals |
genre_facet |
Elephant Seals |
op_source |
PLoS One http://journals.plos.org/plosone |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/11427/16060/1/Costa_Accuracy_of_ARGOS_Locations_2010.pdf |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 © 2010 Costa et al |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008677 |
container_title |
PLoS ONE |
container_volume |
5 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
e8677 |
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