Description
Animals are sentinels of environmental change, and animal telemetry is a commonly used tool to quantify habitat use and help understand environmental changes. NASA data can be used to characterize the environmental parameters that infer the habitats that animals use. This training course will provide participants with an overview of animal tracking sensors, NASA’s history of animal tracking, and the types of remote sensing data that can be paired with animal telemetry. Because animal telemetry collects frequent animal location data, it is important to consider time-matched remote sensing in data analyses. In remote marine environments, for example, Level 3 and Level 4 products provide the most complete spatiotemporal coverage, such as OSCAR for ocean surface currents.
Participants will then learn how to integrate telemetry and remote sensing data by applying a basic data standardization process to animal tracking data, visualizing the animals’ distribution via home ranges with utilization distributions, downloading remote sensing data, and characterizing animals’ habitats in a species distribution model to infer habitat use. The balance of tradeoffs (spatiotemporal mismatches; computational power and time) from pairing remotely sensed data with animal tracks will be discussed. Examples for both marine and terrestrial environments will be provided.
- Fundamentals of Remote Sensing
- This training assumes that participants will have some knowledge of animal behavior, ecological processes, basic statistics, a basic understanding of remote sensing, and know how to use the program R.
By the end of this training attendees will be able to:
- Identify the types of animal tracking tags and sensors that are commonly used in animal tracking.
- Identify the types of remote sensing data and products that can be used for species distribution models and step-selection functions.
- Recognize the process for integrating remote sensing and animal tracking data in species distribution models and step selection functions to facilitate an understanding of animal movements in relation to their environment.
- Recognize key takeaways from examples of terrestrial and marine applications that inform and characterize animals’ habitats.
Primary target audience: Movement ecologists, natural resource managers
Secondary target audience: Remote sensing scientists developing products usable by the primary audience
Two 90-minute parts, each including a 30 minute Q&A session
ARSET trainers: Juan Torres-Pérez
Guest Instructors: Dr. Morgan Gilmour (NASA Ames Research Center), Claire Teitelbaum (Assistant Unit Leader, Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit)
- Overview of animal tracking
- How is remote sensing related to animal tracking?
- Working with animal tracking data
- Summary
- Q&A session
ARSET trainers: Juan Torres-Pérez
Guest Instructors: Dr. Morgan Gilmour (NASA Ames Research Center), Claire Teitelbaum (Assistant Unit Leader, Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit)
- Integration of animal tracking and remote sensing: Case study (Marine)
- Integration of animal tracking and remote sensing: Case study (Terrestrial)
- Summary
- Q&A session
