Article

Arctic Archive of Animal Migration

A Golden Eagle soaring.
Golden Eagle.

NPS/Jared Hughey

A team of over 150 Arctic researchers recently formed the Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), which provides a unified location where researchers from around the world can find and store animal movement datasets. So far, the AAMA houses data from over 200 studies from 1991 to present on a wide variety of species. The AAMA offers researchers an important new tool to investigate ecological relationships of many species of wildlife and how they are being influenced by changing conditions in the Arctic. As an example, in this paper researchers used the new archive for three novel analyses and found that the timing of Golden Eagle migration, timing of caribou calving, and movement rates of some species of terrestrial animals were linked to a warming climate. The AAMA also offers new opportunities for anyone to learn more about the different types of movement studies being conducted on Arctic wildlife. The AAMA is hosted on the global Movebank database (www.movebank.org).

Ecological Insights from Three Decades of Animal Movement Tracking Across a Changing Arctic

Abstract

The Arctic is entering a new ecological state, with alarming consequences for humanity. Animal-borne sensors offer a window into these changes. Although substantial animal tracking data from the Arctic and subarctic exist, most are difficult to discover and access. Here, we present the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a growing collection of more than 200 standardized terrestrial and marine animal tracking studies from 1991 to the present. The AAMA supports public data discovery, preserves fundamental baseline data for the future, and facilitates efficient, collaborative data analysis. With AAMA-based case studies, we document climatic influences on the migration phenology of eagles, geographic differences in the adaptive response of caribou reproductive phenology to climate change, and species-specific changes in terrestrial mammal movement rates in response to increasing temperature.


Davidson, S. C., G. Bohrer, E. Gurarie, S. LaPoint, P. J. Mahoney, ... K. Joly, ... J. P. Lawler, ...B. Mangipane, ... C. L. McIntyre, ... P. A. Owen, ... M. S. Sorum, ... et al. 2020. Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic. Science 370(6517): 712-715.

Tags

Last updated: November 9, 2020