National and International experts visit Corvo Island to test innovative systems for monitoring of seabird behaviour
This week a group of specialists is in Corvo island to test innovative techniques to detect seabirds using radar systems.
The study of seabirds has many technical difficulties to researchers, which are often difficult to overcome. Its nocturnal behaviour, together with the breeding habit of building their nests in burrows in the ground, often in inaccessible cliffs, makes it impossible to determine the size of some populations.
SPEA teamed up with Portuguese and foreign experts, to use radar detection techniques to study these birds for the first time in Portugal. The detection and study of birds using radar had been used for monitoring of wind farms and in studies of the New Lisbon Airport, although the detection of flying seabirds, due to their habits and places of occurrence, present other challenges and increased difficulties for their study. "For the first time we may know how many birds use the cliffs, which areas they prefer and whether it is possible to ID different species at long distances and without actually seeing the birds." says Pedro Geraldes, the project manager.
The results will determine the future operations of the project and might be an important milestone that opens new doors to the study of such birds in the archipelago."If we get good results with the use of radar, new possibilities for the study of seabirds in the Azores and elsewhere in the Atlantic will open up and will allow us to know details of the life of these birds that until now were impossible to determine" affirms Pedro Geraldes.
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