High collision vulnerability of Two-banded Plovers to wind turbines revealed by GPS tracking with probabilistic altitude modelling
Abstract
We conducted the first collision vulnerability assessment for any Patagonian shorebird using GPS telemetry and a novel probabilistic approach incorporating GPS altitude measurement uncertainty. We analysed 237 flight observations from 15 Two-banded Plovers (Anarhynchus falklandicus) at Bahía Lomas, Chilean Patagonia, assessing collision vulnerability as the proportion of flights within the rotor swept zone under four turbine configurations. Incorporating GPS altitude uncertainty revealed that traditional binary classification underestimates collision vulnerability by 22-44%; increasing turbine ground clearance reduced vulnerability by 42%.
Type
Publication
Journal of Applied Ecology, 63
Status
Peer-reviewed
Open access
Authors
Quantitative Ecologist
I am a quantitative ecologist and researcher working on the population dynamics,
survival, and conservation status of birds in Chile and the wider Neotropics. I hold a
PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford and have since worked on long-term
demographic studies of forest birds in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, survival
modeling with the Swiss Ornithological Institute, and shorebird and waterbird
monitoring across Chile with the Red de Observadores de Aves y Vida Silvestre de Chile
(ROC). My work combines large citizen-science datasets (eBird) with mark-recapture,
mixed-effects, and integral projection models in R to produce robust, reproducible
estimates for conservation decision-making.