Department of Migration and Immuno-ecology, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Am Obstberg 1, 78315, Radolfzell, Germany.
Núcleo de Teoria e Pesquisa do Comportamento, Universidade Federal do Pará, Rua Augusto Correa 01, Guamá, 66075-110, Belém, Brazil.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 25;7(1):6421. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-05319-8.
Understanding how soaring birds use updrafts at small spatial scales is important to identify ecological constraints of movement, and may help to prevent conflicts between wind-energy development and the conservation of wildlife. We combined high-frequency GPS animal tracking and fine-spatial-scale uplift modelling to establish a link between flight behaviour of soaring birds and the distribution of updrafts. We caught 21 black kites (Milvus migrans) and GPS-tracked them while flying over the Tarifa region, on the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar. This region has a diverse topography and land cover, favouring a heterogeneous updraft spatial distribution. Bird tracks were segmented and classified into flight modes from motion parameters. Thermal and orographic uplift velocities were modelled from publically available remote-sensing and meteorological data. We found that birds perform circular soaring in areas of higher predicted thermal uplift and linear soaring in areas of higher predicted orographic uplift velocity. We show that updraft maps produced from publically available data can be used to predict where soaring birds will concentrate their flight paths and how they will behave in flight. We recommend the use of this methodological approach to improve environmental impact assessments of new wind-energy installations.
了解翱翔鸟类如何在小空间尺度上利用上升气流对于确定运动的生态限制非常重要，并且可能有助于防止风能开发与野生动物保护之间的冲突。我们结合了高频 GPS 动物跟踪和精细空间尺度上升流建模，以确定翱翔鸟类的飞行行为与上升气流分布之间的联系。我们在直布罗陀海峡西班牙一侧的塔里法地区捕捉了 21 只黑鸢（Milvus migrans）并对其进行了 GPS 跟踪。该地区地形和土地覆盖多样，有利于上升气流空间分布的异质性。根据运动参数将鸟的轨迹分段并分类为飞行模式。从公开的遥感和气象数据中模拟了热上升和地形上升速度。我们发现鸟类在预测热上升较高的区域进行圆形翱翔，在预测地形上升速度较高的区域进行直线翱翔。我们表明，可从公开数据中生成上升气流图，以预测翱翔鸟类将集中飞行路径的位置以及它们在飞行中的行为方式。我们建议使用这种方法来改进新风力发电设施的环境影响评估。
