NEW TOOL SHOWS ALASKA’ S TAGGED WILDLIFE IN MOTION
Above: Bob Gill, Jr., holds a whimbrel equipped with a solar-powered satellite transmitter along the Colville River near Nuiqsut, Alaska. — Courtesy of Daniel R Ruthrauff, USGS Alaska Science Center
Want to see the flight paths of migrating swans as they come and go from Alaska? Or the seasonal meanderings of Pacific walruses in the Chukchi Sea? Now you can via USGS’ new Tagged Animal Movement Explorer (TAME). The online tool animates the migratory routes of hundreds of marine mammals, seabirds, and others that are carrying satellite transmitters.
“We designed the tracking collection to be useful to everyone,” says USGS wildlife biologist David Douglas. He says the visualized data can be especially interesting to teachers and students because it encompasses wide-ranging subjects, including physics, math, geography, biology, and more. The Smithsonian and National Audubon Society have also tapped into TAME for conservation projects.
Viewers can filter TAME by species and even individual animals. For instance, the almost daily locations of bar-tailed godwits are shown as they migrate over 15,000 kilometers between Alaska and New Zealand. Daily locations appear for over 900 Pacific walruses as they swim between U.S. and Russian waters in the Chukchi and Bering seas. Loons, murres, and whimbrels are just some of dozens of others whose movements are shown as they fly between beaches and wetlands across the continent.
The open access product comes courtesy of the USGS Alaska Science Center, which offers a suite of online data and educational resources about Alaska’s lands, waters, and wildlife. Researchers from outside USGS can also upload their own studies onto TAME.
“These are hard-won data,” says USGS wildlife biologist Lee Tibbetts, “because tracking studies require lots of time and energy from researchers and, of course, from the birds and mammals themselves.”
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