Combining Tracking and Remote Sensing to Identify Critical Year-Round Site, Habitat Use and Migratory Connectivity of a Threatened Waterbird Species

Nyambayar Batbayar,Anthony David Fox,Iderbat Damba,Kunpeng Yi,Tseveenmyadag Natsagdorj,Lei Cao,Junjian Zhang

doi:10.3390/rs13204049

Abstract

We tracked 39 western flyway white-naped cranes (Antigone vipio) throughout multiple annual cycles from June 2017 to July 2020, using GSM-GPS loggers providing positions every 10-min to describe migration routes and key staging areas used between their Mongolian breeding and wintering areas in China’s Yangtze River Basin. The results demonstrated that white-naped cranes migrated an average of 2556 km (±187.9 SD) in autumn and 2673 km (±342.3) in spring. We identified 86 critical stopover sites that supported individuals for more than 14 days, within a 100–800 km wide migratory corridor. This study also confirmed that Luan River catchment is the most important staging region, where white-naped cranes spent 18% of the annual cycle (in both spring and autumn) each year. Throughout the annual cycle, 69% of the tracking locations were from outside of the currently protected areas, while none of the critical staging areas enjoyed any form of site protection. We see further future potential to combine avian tracking data and remote-sensing information throughout the annual range of the white-naped crane to restore it and other such species to a more favourable conservation status.

Highlights

As habitat loss and climate change disrupt the progress of threatened migratory waterbirds, an understanding of species breeding and wintering distributions, migration routes and critical staging areas, food supply and habitat utilization is becoming fundamental to our ability to safeguard the future viability of critical populations [1,2,3,4]
There is a need to expand the study to more adult individuals from a greater area of the breeding range to add to our knowledge of flyway definition, important staging areas and the need for conservation management of habitats used by the species
We urge more investment in follow-up research on the ground to capitalise on the knowledge presented here about key land use types exploited by white-naped cranes at different times of the annual cycle

Summary

Introduction

Technological advances provide us with telemetry devices that, when deployed on birds, remotely monitor their activity and environmental variables while simultaneously recording their latitude, longitude and altitude to within a few metres’ accuracy in real time as they cross oceans, forests, deserts, and mountainous terrain, transmitting data remotely via mobile telephone networks [5]. Data from such fine-scale GPS tracking loggers, coupled with remote sensing tools provide the level of detail needed to identify and characterize temporal patterns in space-use by birds and reveal the critical habitats they use at all stages throughout their annual cycle [6]. Many satellite-derived remote-sensing data sets have become accessible free of charge, providing new opportunities to develop models to predict how individual birds and species will respond to seasonal or climatic changes based on the combination of bird telemetry data and remote-sensing data [10]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion