title: Innovative Visualizations Shed Light on Avian Nocturnal Migration.
abstract: Globally, billions of flying animals undergo seasonal migrations, many of which occur at night. The temporal and spatial scales at which migrations occur and our inability to directly observe these nocturnal movements makes monitoring and characterizing this critical period in migratory animals' life cycles difficult. Remote sensing, therefore, has played an important role in our understanding of large-scale nocturnal bird migrations. Weather surveillance radar networks in Europe and North America have great potential for long-term low-cost monitoring of bird migration at scales that have previously been impossible to achieve. Such long-term monitoring, however, poses a number of challenges for the ornithological and ecological communities: how does one take advantage of this vast data resource, integrate information across multiple sensors and large spatial and temporal scales, and visually represent the data for interpretation and dissemination, considering the dynamic nature of migration? We assembled an interdisciplinary team of ecologists, meteorologists, computer scientists, and graphic designers to develop two different flow visualizations, which are interactive and open source, in order to create novel representations of broad-front nocturnal bird migration to address a primary impediment to long-term, large-scale nocturnal migration monitoring. We have applied these visualization techniques to mass bird migration events recorded by two different weather surveillance radar networks covering regions in Europe and North America. These applications show the flexibility and portability of such an approach. The visualizations provide an intuitive representation of the scale and dynamics of these complex systems, are easily accessible for a broad interest group, and are biologically insightful. Additionally, they facilitate fundamental ecological research, conservation, mitigation of human-wildlife conflicts, improvement of meteorological products, and public outreach, education, and engagement.
authors.affiliation: Computational Geo-Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Judy
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1652-7646
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shamoun-Baranes
authors.affiliation: Information Science, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Farnsworth
authors.affiliation: Information & Data Centre, Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Aelterman
authors.affiliation: CESAM University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.|South Iceland Research Centre, University of Iceland, Selfoss, Iceland.
authors.forename: Jose A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Alves
authors.affiliation: Information & Data Centre, Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Azijn
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Garrett
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.affiliation: Electrical Engineering Department, University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal.
authors.forename: Sérgio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Branco
authors.affiliation: Information & Data Centre, Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Desmet
authors.affiliation: Computational Geo-Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Adriaan M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Dokter
authors.affiliation: Oklahoma Biological Survey, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kyle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Horton
authors.affiliation: Information Science, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kelling
authors.affiliation: Oklahoma Biological Survey, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jeffrey F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Hidde
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leijnse
authors.affiliation: Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jingjing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rong
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America.|Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sheldon
authors.affiliation: iMinds, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Wouter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Van den Broeck
authors.affiliation: Wildly Mild, Ninove, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jan Klaas
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Van Den Meersche
authors.affiliation: Information Science, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Benjamin Mark
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Van Doren
authors.affiliation: Computational Geo-Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: van Gasteren
mesh_terms: D025041:Animal Migration; D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds; D003624:Darkness; D005060:Europe; D005426:Flight, Animal; D011825:Radar; D014481:United States; D064878:Web Browser