Shortlisted for the 2024 Southwood Prize
Maja Bradarić details how, alongside colleagues, utilising radar data, weather and phenological variables allowed for the development of seasonal near-term forecasts of low-altitude nocturnal bird migration over the southern North Sea.
About the research
Overview
Our research explores environmental drivers and spatiotemporal patterns of nocturnal bird migration over the North Sea to predict migration intensity for conservation frameworks. The shortlisted paper explored whether developing a robust bird migration forecast model for informing offshore wind turbine shutdowns is possible using only five years of radar data, when there is a firm understanding that conservation measures should only be based on long-term studies. Beyond modelling, we assessed the role of environmental drivers in shaping migration and explored how conservation actions based on short-term datasets can be used in a rapidly changing world, allowing for immediate conservation action.
Challenges
We were quite surprised to see how well the most intense migration overlapped with wind conditions during which wind energy production was minimal. Our colleagues from Waardenburg Ecology, who were involved in a larger project, also showed this. The biggest challenges were radar data post-processing and finding the right modelling approach to deal with imbalanced data.
Next steps and broader implications
I believe the field will benefit from further AI development and finding ways to combine the data from various sources and tracking technologies. This is essential as various data collection approaches have complementary advantages and disadvantages, allowing for obtaining observations with one technology under conditions during which the others fail. Such a combination will enable the collection of more data points, essential for data-hungry models, and enhance our understanding of bird migration and its key drivers.
Our research provided a practical tool for policymakers to balance increasing wind energy production with migratory bird conservation. We also show that with relevant policies in place, and a dynamic approach in which the models developed can be updated with new data, it is possible to establish conservation measures relying on relatively short-term datasets. We hope this will encourage more such approaches, as the pace of environmental alteration often does not allow for long-term studies before something needs to be done.
About the author
Current position
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Theoretical and Computational Biology group at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam.
Getting involved in ecology
I grew up in a family that spent much time in nature, and my fascination with the natural world started very early. Over the years, I kept changing my mind about which of its many aspects I would pursue in my studies. Finally, I kicked off my bachelor studies focusing on genetics. I became interested in ecology through work on population genetics in a broader project exploring distribution and conservation of endangered Prenj Alpine Salamander in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After that, I continued my master’s in ecology and became fascinated by movement ecology, which led me to bird migration research.
Current research focus
Together with my colleagues, I continued researching bird migration across the North Sea. With more offshore radars deployed, we are looking into the heterogeneity of spatiotemporal migration patterns across different North Sea locations, exploring whether the size and shape of this ecological barrier affects the synchronisation of migration and small-scale migration routes.
Advice for fellow ecologists
Bird migration is a complex, dynamic and ever-changing process. To ensure its understanding and conservation, we should never give up exploring it from new angles, with (a combination of) different methods and renewed curiosity.
Read the full article “Forecasting nocturnal bird migration for dynamic aeroconservation: The value of short-term datasets“ in Journal of Applied Ecology.
Find the other early career researchers and their articles that have been shortlisted for the 2024 Southwood Prize here!
