School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Oct 26;17(10):e0276098. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276098. eCollection 2022.
Advances in animal biologging technologies have greatly improved our understanding of animal movement and distribution, particularly for highly mobile species that travel across vast spatial scales. Assessing the accuracy of these devices is critical to drawing appropriate conclusions from resulting data. While understanding the vertical dimension of movements is key to assessing habitat use and behavior in aerial species, previous studies have primarily focused on assessing the accuracy of biologging devices in the horizontal plane with far less emphasis placed on the vertical plane. Here we use an Unaccompanied Aircraft System (UAS) outfitted with a laser altimeter to broadly assess the accuracy of altitude estimates of three commonly used avian biologging devices during three field trials: stationary flights, continuous horizontal movements, and continuous vertical movements. We found that the device measuring barometric pressure consistently provided the most accurate altitude estimates (mean error of 1.57m) and effectively captured finer-scale vertical movements. Conversely, devices that relied upon GPS triangulation to estimate altitude typically overestimated altitude during horizontal movements (mean error of 6.5m or 40.96m) and underestimated amplitude during vertical movements. Additional factors thought to impact device accuracy, including Horizontal- and Position- Dilution of Precision and the time intervals over which altitude estimates were assessed, did not have notable effects on results in our analyses. Reported accuracy values for different devices may be useful in future studies of aerial species' behavior relative to vertical obstacles such as wind turbines. Our results suggest that studies seeking to quantify altitude of aerial species should prioritize pressure-based measurements, which provide sufficient resolution for examining broad and some fine-scale behaviors. This work highlights the importance of considering and accounting for error in altitude measurements during avian studies relative to the scale of data needed to address particular scientific questions.
动物生物遥测技术的进步极大地提高了我们对动物运动和分布的理解，特别是对于在广阔空间尺度上迁移的高度移动物种。评估这些设备的准确性对于从得出的数据中得出适当的结论至关重要。虽然了解运动的垂直维度对于评估空中物种的栖息地利用和行为至关重要，但以前的研究主要集中在评估生物遥测设备在水平面上的准确性，而对垂直面上的准确性关注较少。在这里，我们使用配备激光高度计的无人驾驶飞行器系统 (UAS) 在三次野外试验中广泛评估三种常用鸟类生物遥测设备的高度估计准确性：固定飞行、连续水平运动和连续垂直运动。我们发现，测量气压的设备始终提供最准确的高度估计值（平均误差为 1.57 米），并且有效地捕捉到更精细的垂直运动。相反，依赖 GPS 三角测量来估计高度的设备在水平运动期间通常会高估高度（平均误差为 6.5 米或 40.96 米），在垂直运动期间低估幅度。其他被认为会影响设备准确性的因素，包括水平和位置精度稀释和评估高度估计的时间间隔，在我们的分析中没有产生显著影响。不同设备的报告准确性值可能对未来研究空中物种相对于风力涡轮机等垂直障碍物的行为有用。我们的结果表明，研究空中物种高度的研究应优先考虑基于压力的测量，这为检查广泛和一些精细的行为提供了足够的分辨率。这项工作强调了在鸟类研究中相对于解决特定科学问题所需的数据规模考虑和考虑高度测量误差的重要性。
