Restringido

Operational radars used in meteorology have been known to register biological targets, such as birds. These radars accumulate a great treasure of data based on their continuous operation mode and widespread use. In this study a novel methodology is presented to extract bird migration parameters such as flight altitude and migration traffic rates from radar wind profiler (RWP) time series data. Data was obtained from a boundary layer RWP from the Basque meteorology agency (Euskalmet), located at the coast of Bilbao, Spain. This location lies in the East Atlantic flyway of birds and migratory birds have seasonally deteriorated the quality of the wind measurements. The question arouse if this radar could potentially be used to study migration patterns. In a first approach filtered spectral, moment and consensus data were assessed as to general presence/absence of birds. Then, unfiltered time series data were analysed from spring migration 2015. It was possible to establish a robust methodology, validated by thermal imaging, to identify bird echoes at time series level and reproducible criteria to extract migration parameters without any bias from atmospheric or other signals. Results are presented and briefly discussed. This novel approach provides a valuable and reliable tool which can be also used as a complementing system to horizontal information from weather radars.

Weisshaupt, N., Lehmann, V., Arizaga, J., Maruri, M. 2017. A qualitative and quantitative approach to study bird migration based on time series data from radar wind profilers.En: International Conference on Radar aeroecology: applications and perspectives, Roma.