New Ornithological Radar Technologies for Bird & Bat Discrimination & Species Identification

Radars are more frequently being used to develop data on bird and bat activity at proposed wind turbine sites for determination of mortality risk. Radar provides superior data compared to traditional bird and bat survey techniques generating highly robust datasets to support the risk analysis. Most radar systems to date, however, have used marine radars and, while some are capable of sizing targets into general classes, they are not able to reliably discriminate birds from bats or insects or provide species identification. Insects can be filtered out of the data using various processing techniques, but the lack of target discrimination between bats and birds makes determination of specific exposure of each problematic. More sophisticated military tracking radars have also been used to track individual birds and bats, and tracking radar data can provide more specific information on wing beat frequency and other characteristics of each target allowing more accurate separation into different size classes for birds and bats, and in some instances, provide identification of specific species. This presentation will review how the bird/bat and species ID data gaps can be addressed using new, advanced radars that will provide much more scientifically sound and detailed data for use in developing bird and bat ris