Discover 5 Ways That Radar Can Be Used for Biodiversity Conservation
Over the past 70 years, radar technology has been dominated by military and weather applications. Yet, during this period, we have also discovered that radar can be used for another important purpose: understanding and measuring the biodiversity of birds, insects, and other animals in the air.
Most of us wake up in the morning, grab our coffee, and (in the UK, certainly!) watch the multi-coloured rain clouds move across the weather forecast map on the local news. Whilst the weather here can be dismal, there is something bright beyond the clouds — the vast amounts of radar data that we collect.
In much the same way that radar can detect rain, hail, sleet, snow, and clouds, it can also see birds, bugs, and bats. Recent advancements mean that biologists can now map biodiversity using radar — a tool that will allow researchers to tackle some significant challenges in the field of biodiversity conservation.
Here are five of the key ways in which radar can help to save the environment:
1. Tracking locusts
A major challenge in Africa and South Asia comes with protecting crops from marauding insects. Locust swarms can be billions of insects covering 10s of kilometres, devouring everything in their path.
Key to defending crops is the ability to monitor and forecast locust movement. However, spotting swarms early and keeping tabs on them during their movement is difficult with limited resources and often involves driving or flying around large areas trying to spot them by eye.
Weather radars offer the ability to track clouds of locusts as they move through the air. Not only does this information tell us that locusts are present, but we can also estimate the size of the swarm, the number of locusts, and the speed and trajectory of the swarm to estimate where it might land next.
You can find out more about how radar can be used to measure the biomass of species by joining Aeroecology: Exploring biodiversity with Radar
2. Mitigating light pollution
One of the most prominent radar ecology projects is run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the United States. Researchers there have developed the BirdCast system that describes, monitors, and forecasts migratory bird movement across the United States.
Using this system, the researchers can identify key threats that lie along the migration pathways. Significant threats include light pollution and tall buildings in urban areas. When migrating at night, flocks are attracted to areas of light pollution where they are more likely to collide with buildings.
Working with the local municipality, Cornell researchers have used radar data to identify dates to turn off building lights and minimise bird collisions.
Find out more about “Lights Out Texas”!
3. Monitoring biodiversity trends
Another of the key challenges facing biodiversity researchers is the monitoring of biodiversity across large spatial scales and at fine temporal resolutions. In other words, we are looking for patterns in animal populations which occur in different locations simultaneously and at regular intervals.
Current methods are mostly reliant upon ecologists visiting sites and using labour-intensive monitoring techniques. Radar offers an opportunity to look at a vast number of different sites simultaneously with a radar scan every 5–10 minutes — a level of scope and detail that is unprecedented in ecological research. These radar-derived biodiversity data sets will allow us to compare different landscapes, evaluate the impacts of land change and investigate the impacts of change on specific landscapes over time.
You can find out more about how radar can be used to monitor biodiversity trends by joining Aeroecology: Exploring biodiversity with Radar
4. Limiting the transmission of Avian flu between wild birds and poultry
Avian flu represents an emerging threat to both wild birds and domestic poultry. Avian flu is a common and natural part of wild bird ecology but has been particularly prevalent over the past couple of years. As a result, there is a need to mitigate the impacts of avian flu on domestic birds, as they reach poultry farms and zoos.
As natural bird populations are currently so affected by the virus, conservationists are required to monitor the movement of these birds and map the risk of disease exposure. With radar, we can map the migratory patterns of wild birds across the landscape and observe the proximity of their stopover sites to poultry farms and zoos. An interference that will be of great environmental benefit!
5. Evaluating land use policy (Agri-environment schemes)
We have already talked about the importance of radar in the monitoring of biodiversity in a general sense. However, monitoring can also play an important role in producing evidence for policy decisions.
For example: in the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy there is a large amount of money spent on Agri-environment schemes to enhance biodiversity in farmland. Despite the amount of money that is invested in these schemes, there is limited evidence for their effectiveness in enhancing biodiversity.
Radar can help to quantify the benefits of these schemes by generating time series of biodiversity data at alternate locations. This enables comparison between the areas that are implementing Agri-environment schemes and the areas that are not. Ultimately, informing environmental policy.
Radar can also provide important evidence relating to recent decisions on pesticide regulation. In January 2022, the UK government allowed the use of a neonicotinoid pesticide that had previously been banned. We can generate radar-derived time series of biodiversity in locations where this pesticide is applied to find out what the long-term impacts are on the recipient ecosystems.
Having learnt about radar’s capabilities, I’m sure you can agree that its potential application to the conservation of biodiversity makes it an extremely exciting technology. In the future, when you’re watching your morning news, keep an eye out for a bird, bug, and bat map that, like your weather forecast, is a product of radar!
Want to learn more?
Join our free online course Aeroecology: Exploring biodiversity with Radar here!
By Dr Christopher Hassall
