Project Funding: 2014 - 2018

NRA: 2012 NASA: Ecological Forecasting   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
The Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) has been identified as a key indicator species of the health and status of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystem, which is currently threatened by commercial fishing, a growing tourism industry, and the effects of climate change. Despite its central role in the decision-making process for conservation and management in Antarctica, data on Adélie penguin populations has been limited by the current practice of monitoring only the tiny fraction of its breeding population situated near permanent research stations. This situation is poised for change as the use of remote sensing technology radically transforms Antarctic ecology and management from a data poor situation to a data rich situation. This proposal facilitates that paradigm shift through technological developments in the analysis of remote sensing imagery, in the development of novel statistical methods for data assimilation and population modeling, and in the creation of an interactive browser-based geospatial decision support application. These results will allow Antarctic stakeholders to access spatially-explicit and policy-appropriate information on Adélie penguin distribution and abundance with associated uncertainties. The engine of this decision-support tool is a physically-based algorithm for retrieval of continent-wide Adélie penguin distribution and abundance from satellite remote sensing imagery. An ecologically-based Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) model assimilates remote sensing results streaming in from a multitude of sensors with other sources of information such as field counts and predictions from state-space models of population change. The DBN model synthesizes this data flow into policy ready metrics of Adélie penguin abundance at any user defined spatial or temporal scale. The results will route through a browser based geospatial application custom designed to address the needs and concerns of the Antarctic research and management community. In sum, we propose to develop the data-to-knowledge pipeline required to fully harness the power of remote sensing for effective resource management in the Antarctic.

Publications:

Borowicz, A., McDowall, P., Youngflesh, C., Sayre-McCord, T., Clucas, G., Herman, R., Forrest, S., Rider, M., Schwaller, M., Hart, T., Jenouvrier, S., Polito, M. J., Singh, H., Lynch, H. J. 2018. Multi-modal survey of Adelie penguin mega-colonies reveals the Danger Islands as a seabird hotspot. Scientific Reports. 8(1). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-22313-w

Che-Castaldo, C., Humphries, G., Lynch, H., Humphries, G. Antarctic Penguin Biogeography Project: Database of abundance and distribution for the Adelie, chinstrap, gentoo, emperor, macaroni, and king penguin south of 60 S DOI: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e101581

Humphries, G. R. W., Che-Castaldo, C., Bull, P. J., Lipstein, G., Ravia, A., Carrion, B., Bolton, T., Ganguly, A., Lynch, H. J. 2018. Predicting the future is hard and other lessons from a population time series data science competition. Ecological Informatics. 48, 1-11. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2018.07.004

Humphries, G. R. W., Naveen, R., Schwaller, M., Che-Castaldo, C., McDowall, P., Schrimpf, M., Lynch, H. J. 2017. Mapping Application for Penguin Populations and Projected Dynamics (MAPPPD): data and tools for dynamic management and decision support. Polar Record. 53(2), 160-166. DOI: 10.1017/s0032247417000055

Lynch, H. J., Schwaller, M. R. 2014. Mapping the Abundance and Distribution of Adelie Penguins Using Landsat-7: First Steps towards an Integrated Multi-Sensor Pipeline for Tracking Populations at the Continental Scale. PLoS ONE. 9(11), e113301. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113301

Lynch, M. A., Foley, C. M., Thorne, L. H., Lynch, H. J. 2016. Improving the use of biological data in Antarctic management. Antarctic Science. 28(6), 425-431. DOI: 10.1017/s0954102016000353

Schrimpf, M. B., Che-Castaldo, C., Lynch, H. J. 2019. Regional breeding bird assessment of the Antarctic Peninsula. Polar Biology. 43(2), 111-122. DOI: 10.1007/s00300-019-02613-1

Schwaller, M. R., Lynch, H. J., Tarroux, A., Prehn, B. 2018. A continent-wide search for Antarctic petrel breeding sites with satellite remote sensing. Remote Sensing of Environment. 210, 444-451. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2018.02.071

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Biological Diversity & Ecological Conservation (BDEC) Project Profile