Modeling Bird Migration by Disaggregating Population Level Observations (Papers Track)
Miguel Fuentes (University of Massachusetts, Amherst); Benjamin Van Doren (Cornell University); Daniel Sheldon (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Abstract
Birds are shifting migratory routes and timing in response to climate change, but modeling migration to better understand these changes is difficult. Some recent work leverages fluid dynamics models, but this requires individual flight speed and directional data which may not be readily available. We developed an alternate modeling method which only requires population level positional data and use it to model migration routes of the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). We use our model to sample simulated bird trajectories and compare them to real trajectories in order to evaluate the model.