Linking remote animal detection and movement data and macrosystem environmental datasets and networks

Workshop Summary

This event, featuring experts in the field of remote sensing and animal detection techniques, will focus on how new technologies and capabilities that are used to investigate the distribution and movement of animals can be linked to environmental states and changes at the landscape scale. The explicitly inter-disciplinary nature of the workshop will foster linkages and collaborations to alleviate technical barriers for scaling the information from the animal observation to the macrosystem scale.

• What is the current state of linking broad-scale environmental data with dynamic animal distributions and movements?
• Is it possible to use current technology and capabilities to monitor animals at broad landscape, regional, or continental scales?
• How can fine-scale individual movement data inform courser species’ detection efforts?
• What role can volunteer networks play in data acquisition of either animal or environmental data?
• What are the guiding principles and pitfalls in upscaling/downscaling movement and environmental data to link these available environmental data from satellites, LiDAR, weather stations, reanalysis models, and other remote sensing platforms to animal movement data in ways to answer important ecological questions?

Workshop Contacts

• Justin Cooper, cooperw@si.edu (logistics and general information)
• David Luther, dluther@gmu.edu (workshop substance)

Funded by NSF award # 182349

NEON Data scientist, Christine Laney will attend and contribute NEON-related expertise to the discussions.