18 February 2011
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Every forecaster can tell you about seeing birds and bats on radar. It actually happens quite frequently. I’ve long thought that this data could be of value to biologists, and now it seems they do as well!
Great report from the BBC on it below.
Click the image to see the BBC story.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
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Both amateur birdwatchers and professional biologists have been using radar to track bird migration for a number of years now, and the peer-reviewed literature has a number of papers on this.
Every spring there are websites that show the latest radar imagery so bird watchers can prepare for a possible fall-out, and for others to obtain information on migration pathways.
Out in British Columbia, portable radar units are used to map bird flight paths along mountainous areas that are being considered for wind farm projects. We spent many a night huddled in a tent on a mountain top recording flight paths of individual birds.
Currently, we are talking to small airports in the isolated far north to see if we can use information gleaned from their radar as part of our environmental assessment reports in areas that will be undergoing development (mining, for example).