Distributing transmitters to maximize population-level representativeness in automated radio telemetry studies of animal movement

Telemetry is a powerful and indispensable tool for evaluating wildlife movement and distribution patterns, particularly in systems where opportunities for direct observation are limited. However, the effort and expense required to track individuals often results in small sample sizes, which can lead to biased results if the sample of tracked individuals does not fully capture spatial, temporal, and individual variability within the target population. To better understand the influence of sampling design on results of automated radio telemetry studies, we conducted a retrospective power analysis of very high frequency (VHF) radio telemetry data from the Motus Wildlife Tracking System for two species of birds along the United States Atlantic coast: a shorebird, the piping plover (Charadrius melodus), and a nearshore seabird, the common tern (Sterna hirundo). We found that ~ 100–150 tracked individuals were required to identify 90% of locations known to be used by the tracked population, with 40–50 additional individuals required to include 95% of used locations. For any number of individuals, the percentage of stations included in the sample was higher for common terns than for piping plovers when tags were deployed within a single site and year. Percentages of stations included increased for piping plovers when birds were tagged over multiple sites and, to a lesser extent, years, and increased with average length of the tracking period. The probability that any given receiver station used by the population would be included in a subsample increased with the number of birds tracked, station proximity to a migratory stopover or staging site, number of receiving antennas per station, and percentage of the tracked population present. Our results provide general guidance for the number and distribution of tagged birds required to obtain representative VHF telemetry data, while also highlighting the importance of accounting for station network configuration and species-specific differences in behavior when designing automated radio telemetry studies to address specific research questions. Our results have broad applications to remotely track movements of small-bodied migratory wildlife in inaccessible habitats, including predicting and monitoring effects of offshore wind energy development

Implanted Satellite Transmitters Affect Sea Duck Movement Patterns at Short and Long Timescales

Studies of the effects of transmitters on wildlife often focus on survival. However, sublethal behavioral changes resulting from radio-marking have the potential to affect inferences from telemetry data and may vary based on individual and environmental characteristics. We used a long-term, multi-species tracking study of sea ducks to assess behavioral patterns at multiple temporal scales following implantation of intracoelomic satellite transmitters. We applied state-space models to assess short-term behavioral patterns in 476 individuals with implanted satellite transmitters, as well as comparing breeding site attendance and migratory phenology across multiple years after capture. In the short term, our results suggest an increase in dispersive behavior immediately following capture and transmitter implantation; however, behavior returned to seasonally average patterns within ~5 days after release. Over multiple years, we found that breeding site attendance by both males and females was depressed during the first breeding season after radio-marking relative to subsequent years, with larger relative decreases in breeding site attendance among males than females. We also found that spring and breeding migrations occurred later in the first year after radio-marking than in subsequent years. Across all behavioral effects, the severity of behavioral change often varied by species, sex, age, and capture season. We conclude that, although individuals appear to adjust relatively quickly (i.e. within 1 week) to implanted satellite transmitters, changes in breeding phenology may occur over the longer term and should be considered when analyzing and reporting telemetry data

Valutazione ambientale dei sistemi energetici a biomassa a scala regionale: il caso dell'Emilia-Romagna (ITA)

How assess and quantify the environmental impact of the biomass power plants systems (biogas and wood combustion) at territorial/provincial/regional planning level? We have wood combustion and biogas plants biomass GIS land registers for 2015 and 2016 catalogued on the base of their technology and productive chains. Using the administrative, planning and environmental cartography we created the GIS regional sensibility (not sensitivity) maps that show what are the areas adapted to built solid biomass and biogas plants, and what are those where them should not be built, and why. Using forest and roads and agricultural GIS layers, we built the GIS regional forest wood potentiality map, to obtain the sustainable forest wood energy budgets and compare them with the relative actual regional/provincial solid biomass combustion plants systems. We created 4+4 different, theoretical but realistic, standardized unitary wood combustion and biogas power plants with their relative productive chains, so to have the quantitative references and data of what and how much do consume each standardized plant of 1MW electric power that works 8000 hours/year and produces 8000 MWh electricity/year, so to be able to multiply their unitary LCA Ecoindicator’99 environmental impacts and damages with the correspondent biomass electric power installed ad provincial/regional level in 2016. So that, he unitary standardized biomass plants will can be used also to estimate and quantify the environmental impacts of other regions/territories, both starting from their quantitative resources consumptions than starting from their corresponded unitary LCA Econidicator’99 impacts and damages values. We built a DIPSR specific indicators model to assess the regional/provincial territorial planning situation obtaining 7 main indicators judgments; to do this we used 5 environmental/territorial GIS layers and we overlapped them with the biomass plants GIS land registers 2015 and 2016, so to obtain descriptive numerical trend judgment values and assess them.Come valutare e quantificare l’impatto ambientale dei sistemi di impianti energetica a biomassa a scala regionale/provinciale? Partendo dai catasti GIS 2015 e 2016 degli impianti classificati in base alla loro tecnologia e filiera di approvvigionamento, utilizzando la cartografia amministrativa territoriale ed ambientale abbiamo creato delle mappe di sensibilità che mostrano dove sarebbe corretto costruire gli impianti e dove invece è proibito, e perché. Utilizzando le mappe GIS della viabilità forestale e agricola abbiamo costruito la mappa della potenzialità legnosa forestale utile, da cui poi si sono elaborati i relativi bilanci energetici. Attraverso un approccio LCA abbiamo creato 4+4 impianti tipi teorici di impianti realistici unitari standardizzati, a biogas e combustione legnosa, di 1 MW di potenza elettrica che produce 8000 MWh/anno di elettricità, ognuno caratterizzato dalla sua tecnologia e filiera di approvvigionamento, che sono poi stati implementati nel software Simapr0 7.3 ed elaborati con il metodo Ecoindicator’99. I loro valori di impatto e di danno ambientali unitari sono poi stati moltiplicati per le potenze elettriche dei vari sistemi regionali a biomasse 2016, ottenendo quindi una stima complessiva a scala regionale dei diversi impatti e danni ambientali. Tutti i parametri utilizzati sono qui disponibili insieme alla loro precisa bibliografia. Abbiamo infine elaborato 5 tematismi territoriali ritenuti importanti sovrapponendoli ai catasti GIS 2015 e 2016 in modo da ottenere degli indicatori di valutazione e di trend dell’evoluzione geografica dei sistemi energetici a biomassa

Statistics of some atmospheric turbulence records relevant to aircraft response calculations

Methods for characterizing atmospheric turbulence are described. The methods illustrated include maximum likelihood estimation of the integral scale and intensity of records obeying the von Karman transverse power spectral form, constrained least-squares estimation of the parameters of a parametric representation of autocorrelation functions, estimation of the power spectra density of the instantaneous variance of a record with temporally fluctuating variance, and estimation of the probability density functions of various turbulence components. Descriptions of the computer programs used in the computations are given, and a full listing of these programs is included

Towards a lexicogrammar of Mekeo

This dissertation represents a first broad sketch of the grammar of the dialects of Mekeo, an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea. The dissertation consists of an evaluation of a finite corpus of data and a preliminary analysis of this data, with some incidental discussion of issues raised bv it. A more definitive description of these four dialects will be some years in the coming. Mekeo represents the western limit of Austronesian expansion along the southern coast of Papua New Guinea. There are four distinct varieties of Mekeo (one of these a convergent dialect, hitherto unreported). One of these varieties has been - and indeed still is by its speakers - called 'Kovio'. This dialect (spoken only in two small villages) appears to have no special linguistic relationship with Lapeka Kuni, despite persistent folk-historical claims to the contrary. Mekeo is a predominantly head-marking language. This feature is shared by certain Oceanic languages, and with most of the Papuan languages, facts of no tittle importance for historical linguistics. As a head-marking language Mekeo is characterised by the absence of a governing relation between the verb and its nominal arguments, and a unilateral syntactic dependency of the noun on the verb. The verb on the other hand ’depends on’ the nouns for the denotational meaning of its incorporated pronominal arguments. I describe Mekeo grammar on a number of simultaneous levels of structure, but chiefly the syntactic and the discourse-pragmatic. Mekeo, tike other head-marking languages, has pronominal arguments incorporated in the verb word. It is also a non-configurational language, and nominals can have an attributive or a predicative function. Mekeo compares in this with Warlpiri, which is however a double-marking language. Mekeo displays a general lack of mophosyntactic reference-tracking mechanisms, although fronting conventions constrain the possibilities of coreference somewhat. There is consequently a relatively high degree of referential indeterminacy, which may be functional in the culture. Pragmatic anaphora - or coherence - is the main source of definiteness, which is largely unmarked. There are no inherent form-function classes corresponding to nouns and verbs, though most roots function typically as one or the other. However, any lexical root can function either as an unmarked non-verbal topic or as the nucleus of a verb word, and in this latter case takes all the morphosyntactic marking that that entails. Even very abstract terms for modes of locomotion or mental reaction function as possessable, countable topics, and what seem to be very concrete terms appear as inchoative verbs. However, while there is no noun-verb dichotomy, there is a complex system of verb classes, defined in terms of their derivational potential, to which all roots belong. The notion of fixed case-frames subcategorised by given verbs is replaced here by the system of verb classes, each of which belongs to one of two systems of verbal alternations, the system of transitivity and the system of causativity. Mekeo operates with a lexical index of pragmatically specifiable scenes, and roots are unspecified in advance for the number and function of obligatory case roles. The speaker and the hearer are largely free to perspectivise these scenes in whichever way they wish. Syntactically speaking, word order in Mekeo is free apart from the verb word, which always functions as a part of the predicate and which (with a very few exceptions) is always clause-final. However, the order of pre-verbal elements in a predication is in effect constrained by coreference restrictions on a fronted topic. Often neither word order nor morphology reflect a distinction between predicative and attributive constructions. However, when an utterance ceases to function as a predication and is embedded in another, it loses the illocutionary force of an assertion. I refer to this as rankshift rather than embedding, since the former term connotes the absence of structural change which marks the change of function. This situation drastically simplifies an account of the grammar in terms of the number of different structures to be described. I have documented the morphosyntactic resources of the language across all its four dialects, and charted fashions of use. Usage is compared across all four dialects whenever the data permits - they way things are actually said as opposed to ways in which they can be said. However, the limits of the sayable remain to be ascertained, and a more thoroughgoing analysis of the lexicogrammar is already planned. A central theoretical question of this dissertation was: "How can Mekeo tolerate such high levels of referential indeterminacy?" I show that one answer to this question lies in the dicourse-pragmatic exploitation of a specialised kind of specificational relative clause, with an abstract nominal head, which is as it were designed to answer the constant query: "Which one of those do you mean?