Nasa technology monitors zebra migration
For 36 years, fences prevented the migration of zebras inward Botswana. Now, the fences are gone together with zebras are in i lawsuit again task the 580-kilometre round-trip. Nasa engineering is beingness used to monitor the trek, together with tin post away fifty-fifty aid predict if together with when the animals are going to brand the journey.
One of the world’s longest migrations of zebras occurs inward the African land of Botswana, but predicting when together with where zebras volition displace has non been possible until now.
Using Nasa pelting together with vegetation data, researchers tin post away rail when together with where arid lands laid out to green, together with for the start fourth dimension anticipate if zebras volition brand the trek or, if the animals discovery piteous weather condition en route, empathize why they volition plough back.
Covering nearly 8500 foursquare miles (22,000 foursquare kilometers), Botswana’s Okavango Delta is i halt of the second-longest zebra migration on Earth, a 360-mile (580-kilometre) circular trip to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans — the largest tabular array salt pan organisation on the planet.
Zebras walk an unmarked road that takes them to the adjacent best house for grazing, piece overhead thundering cloudbursts of late-October rains drive novel constitute growth, filling pockmarks across this largest inland delta inward the world.
In a affair of weeks, the flooded landscape could yield ecosystems even amongst fodder for the zebras.
High above, Earth-orbiting satellites capture images of the zebras’ movements on this epic trek, equally good equally the daily alter inward environmental conditions.
Zebras don’t take information to know when it’s fourth dimension to discovery ameliorate forage: The surge of rain-coaxed grasses greening is their prompt to depart.
But now, researchers are able to accept that information together with predict when the zebras volition move.
Pieter Beck, question associate amongst the Woods Hole Research Center inward Falmouth, Massachusetts, together with 3 collaborators studied brute migration inward a novel way, described inward a newspaper published inward the Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
While tracking brute displace amongst satellites has been accomplished many times, Beck said, he together with his squad combined that information amongst in-depth purpose of environmental satellite data, using a serial of images of vegetation increase together with rainfall taken over days together with weeks.
This sheds unprecedented calorie-free on what drives animals to migrate, he said, what cues they use, together with how brute migrations response to environmental change.
The Zebra Migration Research Project began inward 2008 afterward Hattie Bartlam-Brooks together with her squad discovered the migration during acre operate for Okavango Herbivore Research.
Anecdotal show earlier the 1970s described a zebra migration from the Okavango Delta to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans at the start of the rainy flavor inward September together with continuing through April, but from 1968 to 2004, veterinarian fences prevented zebras from making the migration.
The veterinarian fences — which had been built to maintain wild buffalo from transferring diseases to cattle — were taken downwardly inward 2004.
Within 3 years of the removal of the veterinarian fences, zebra began making movements on the migration path toward the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. These movements were recorded yesteryear GPS collars that were fitted to zebra mares, allowing researchers to accurately tape their movements.
Zebras inward the wild alive for nearly 12 years, thence the migration path could non guide hold been learned from previous generations, said Bartlam-Brooks.
She together with her squad inward the acre observed that the zebras began their migration at the onrush of the rains thence she joined forces amongst Beck to come across how extensive the environment’s influence is on the timing of the zebras’ journey.
Beck combined this GPS displace information amongst satellite imagery taken over the months of the migration. This allowed the researchers to come across how environmental weather condition changed over fourth dimension together with across the landscape.
To rail the greening of leaves, the researchers relied on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index information acquired yesteryear the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board Nasa’s Terra together with Aqua satellites.
The sensors capture growing weather condition yesteryear measuring the reflectance of near-infrared calorie-free from plants.
The squad besides used Nasa’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission information to map daily rainfall, which gave the researchers an see of how much pelting was falling inward three-hour intervals.
The scientists converted the rainfall measurements to daily rates, together with cumulative weekly amounts, together with checked the accuracy yesteryear comparison them amongst ground-based pelting gauges.
Beck together with his squad learned that zebras exercise non follow an internal clock, nor exercise they migrate at a steady pace.
By examining daily rainfall together with weekly vegetation information from satellite images together with entering the information into migration models, the researchers were amazed at how good they could predict when zebras started migrating together with how fast they migrated.
“By comparison the results of the models, it was possible to create upward one's heed which environmental variables are the most effective inward predicting zebra movement, together with and then purpose this cognition to endeavor together with infer equally to how the zebra brand their decisions,” said Gil Bohrer, assistant professor inward the Department of Civil, Environmental, together with Geodetic Engineering at Ohio State University, who collaborated on the project.
“It shows nosotros tin post away figure out rattling closely what ‘makes the zebra move’.”
Bill Fagan, professor of biological scientific discipline at the University of Maryland, finds promise inward the team’s discoveries. “Their discussion,” he said, “was especially intriguing equally a demonstration of how of import the consistency together with strength of the rainfall cues were for migration success.”
He said that it may live on possible for species that guide hold had their migration patterns disrupted to relearn them from “exploratory walks”, driven yesteryear environmental cues.
“With thence many ungulate migrations declining worldwide, it is overnice to guide hold an optimistic outcome nearly migration for a change.”
Having access to Nasa’s gratuitous satellite images that shed calorie-free on the environmental weather condition migratory animals human face upward is something that Beck finds invaluable.
The models provided the squad amongst the agency to cry upward similar a zebra, which has practical applications inward management issues that describe concern humans.
“We’re getting but about the phase where for some organisms, nosotros tin post away purpose satellite information inward management,” he said.
He sees the capability of using the team’s question inward the hereafter to pattern models that volition aid game managers, conservation managers, farmers together with tour operators predict brute migration, whether it’s zebras or other migratory animals. Understanding the mechanisms that drive migratory behaviour is increasingly important, Beck said, inward price of climate change, equally migrating animals rely on multiple habitats.
If migrating animals lose whatever of the habitats they rely on because the timing of their nutrient — insect hatches, greening plants, for illustration — no longer coincides amongst their travel, this tin post away guide hold serious consequences for their continued survival.
Under climate change, things are probable to accelerate, Beck said.
Many of the major migrations on Earth, especially on land, guide hold already been lost, he explains, together with few landscapes are left on globe where the migratory animals exercise non guide hold to portion province resources amongst agriculture together with other human activities.
“We take to know what the fate of those migrations is nether climate change,” Beck said.
“Understanding when animals mightiness come upward through, what drives them, what they’re looking for sometimes. Being able to predict that into the hereafter is rattling useful information to managing those landscapes thence that migratory animals together with humans tin post away coexist.”
Helping zebras go along a journeying — newly discovered yesteryear the animals together with their observers — may let them to acquire by amongst changes inward their environment, an outcome that is non thence black-and-white.
The environmental information sets from Nasa volition go along into the adjacent decade amongst data, provided yesteryear their follow-on missions: the Global Precipitation Measurement mission to launch inward early on 2014, together with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite currently inward orbit.
Reporting: Lisa-Natalie Anjozian
Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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