Animals on the Move: NASA Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE)

Animals on the Move: Remotely Based Determination of Key Drivers Influencing Movements and Habitat Selection of Highly Mobile Fauna Throughout the ABoVE Study Domain

This project is part of the ambitious NASA ABoVE program, and is lead by Dr. Natalie Boelman at Colubmia University together with 5 other Co-Investigators - find out more here on our NASA ABoVE web site. Our overarching science goal is to understand how highly mobile terrestrial fauna navigate and select habitat in the rapidly changing ABoVE Study Domain. Facilitated by many data-sharing collaborations with US and Canadian government agencies, we will use space-based wildlife tracking technology to build an integrated dataset of regional-scale and near-continuous descriptions of passerine (American robins), raptor (Golden Eagles), ungulate (caribou, moose), and predator (wolf and brown bear) locations with both static and dynamic remote sensing products and other regional-scale geospatial datasets (Obj.1). We will use this data to build empiricallybased statistical movement and habitat selection models for multiple groups of animals across the ABoVE Study Domain (Obj.2). The geospatial tools and products will be made accessible to natural resource agencies, wildlife managers, First Nations, Alaskan natives, and other stakeholders to aid them in management and adaptation decisions (Obj.3). Further, our novel models and geospatial tools will be available for Phase 2 and 3 ABoVE studies in which future projections of animal movement and habitat selection will be made, and subsequently used to determine societal consequences and develop decision support products.  http://www.umt.edu/above-caribou/default.php