Environmental News Network - Wildlife Scientists Are Solving Big Data Problems to Track Animals Around the Globe

Details: By North Carolina State University; 17.Dec

Using a transmitter attached to a tiny backpack, zoologist Roland Kays tracked an egret – a large, white, wading bird – from North Carolina as it migrated south.

Julie Swatson

Using a transmitter attached to a tiny backpack, zoologist Roland Kays tracked an egret – a large, white, wading bird – from North Carolina as it migrated south. Then his data showed the transmitter had stopped moving. Kays wanted to find out what happened, but there was just one problem: The transmitter was in South America.

So Kays offered a reward for information on the bird and successful collection of his transmitter. Eventually, a bird watcher was able to locate it in Colombia. They found the bird died in a marsh. They collected the transmitter and sent it back by mail.

In a new study, Kays and researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and other sites around the world published a paper in the journal Methods of Ecology and Evolution on technology they’ve developed to analyze, visualize and store data in the new “golden age” of wildlife tracking. The study describes Movebank, a free set of tools to help researchers address the big data problems of wildlife tracking. Scientists are already using it to manage more than 3 million new data records generated each day.

Photo Credit: geralt via Pixabay

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Wildlife Scientists Are Solving Big Data Problems to Track Animals Around the Globe