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Fledged and Ready For Takeoff
It’s already the end of January and so my migration towards my final result has commenced. It has so far been a satisfying journey, though not without its challenges.
Map of the most recent International Piping Plover Census results in Texas
Elliott-Smith, E., Bidwell, M., Holland, A.E., and Haig, S.M., 2015, Data from the 2011 International Piping Plover Census: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 922, 296 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ds922.
Thus far I have compiled data on the birds from the winter portions of the International Piping Plover Censuses, using the breeding grounds portions for reference as to the actual population of adults at the time. It’s necessary to have the breeding censuses as a reference, because in all five winter censuses from 1991 to 2011 they have never counted more than 69% of the adult population seen later in the same year at the breeding grounds. I have also received shapefiles from the Texas Natural Diversity Database (TXNDD) containing data which catalogues the presence of piping plover across time and the whole state. This has been very helpful for getting more recent context, as it was surprisingly difficult to find any censuses at large scale since the one in 2011.
As I began to analyze the bird data, I decided to look more into major oil spills, rather than just where rigs are located and major traffic takes place. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill had a clear effect on the 2011 data, especially in Louisiana, so it became more logical to include them. Other than that, no real changes were made to my original plans for the data.
Map I created in ArcGIS using relevant layers like erosion along the Texas coast, oil rigs, pipelines, and protected areas. Most of it is up to date as of at least 1/13/22.
Esri. "Imagery Hybrid" [basemap]. Scale Not Given. "World Hybrid Imagery Map" January 13, 2022. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=30d6b8271e1849cd9c3042060001f425 (January 26, 2022)
As for mapping out my destination, there are many different websites to choose from. I have investigated FracTracker.org, the U.S. Energy Information Administration website, the Texas Natural Resources Information System maps, Landsat data from NASA, and ArcGIS, a mapping offshoot of a company called Esri which specializes in location analytics, among others. Being able to import data into ArcGIS from other organizations and discovering that many organizations use the ArcGIS base to create their models has made this easier. I now have mostly eliminated FracTracker and some others as sources, which was surprising at the time, but ArcGIS has so much useful content pre-loaded and it was very easy to upload the shapefiles from TXNDD into it. The ability to see specific locations in great detail as well as the more big picture look at the whole Gulf is another advantage.
I have looked at many different methods to calculate my trajectory, but the one which seems most valuable is logistic regression, as it has come up in multiple papers that I have seen with similar objectives. I will complete one regression analysis on the declining presence of plover in certain areas per year and another on the human activities in those same areas per year. I may break this down further into oil and gas activity and housing activity, making three regressions to compare for a given site, but that remains to be seen. In sites where flocks numbering hundreds of birds have built up, which is unusual due to their high site fidelity and corresponding territorial behavior, I will do the same thing. I will thereby be able to come to a conclusion as to what solutions would best prevent the disruption of plover behaviors and habitat.
Over the next month, I will work to narrow down which sites in Texas and Louisiana have enough data available to make it worth completing multiple logistic regressions on them. I will then complete them and be one step closer to my final suggestion for a solution. I can only hope that my flight will continue to be this smooth.
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