EMS Project: Mapping bird distribution.

I feel like I have completely abandoned this blog - I haven't, I've just had my mind in other places (i.e. stuck in ArcGIS, my old pal) and having a little bit of me time with my other blog. I've had a lot of things on my mind and, without wanting to clog up this blog or my main Twitter account (RachLinaker) with personal-rubbish, I put it onto my other. Now, everything is all right in the world - woohoo.

So, of late I have been inputting the reams and reams of data collected by those lovely people of the EMS management team (massive thanks to you!) and looking at the survey sheets that go alongside them to gauge where abouts on the shore the birds were recorded from. It has been one heck of a task and one that took much longer than anticipated, as such I am now crying out for 'the fear' to hit me. Come on... Please! Anyway, I'm finally done - hurrah.

Messy messy.

Things were looking a little messy (trust me, when you're playing around with hundreds of points, the little colourful balls on the page do resemble a child's birthday party... I've said that one before) so I wanted to play around with the shapefiles and have them represent high and low tide, great, except some sides were only sampled and high or low. I scrapped that idea and hopefully, once I've done the statistics, this will back it up (I've saved the new layers just in case there is a significant difference between either numbers or activity patterns - probably a little difficult to do with a relatively small sample size). Instead, I opted to divide the counts up as to whether they were feeding or roosting - this should give an idea of what areas of each site are used more readily by each species and give an idea of these little hotspots so to speak. Looking back, this is exactly why the mapping was done in the first place so that's good. I've come across a few bumps along the way unfortunately, one being that for some sites, activity just was not recorded. Others, for example with Bran Sands in particular, multiple birds were noted on the survey sheets but numbers hadn't been noted beside them so it may be a little skewed. Also, I've had to scrap the "end count" data with regards to the mapping - there were just too many that either weren't counted or activity was accounted for or anything like that. Not like anybody cares about this but it's a nice note for me at least! 

I still need to sort out the legend somewhat. I've probably made things very difficult for myself, but essentially the legend is only showing the size classes used for the map - fine - except I've made two separate layer files so that I can show both Feeding and Roosting birds, and then only select one or the other - now GIS is creating duplicate birds on the legend... I think I may have to manually manipulate it since my brain is officially dead tonight.

What I need you to do is imagine that the legend looks awfully pretty. I think I'm going to have another play around and set it out on portrait paper, not landscape, and then at least the legend can go down vertically on the right. At least you can see that certain species do prefer certain areas of the habitat... 

I'm going to have a google around and see about placing two different maps on the same page. There must be a way of doing it and I'm just being a little bit blind.

More to come! 

Rachel, xo

EMS Project: Maps galore

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working ridiculously hard with my old pal GIS trying to formulate some maps and whatnot for the EMS project I am currently working on. Thus far I have created a few maps with general species abundances (it looks very messy and almost looked like a child's birthday party, i.e. with a lot of brightly coloured 'balloons' all over the shop).

AVERAGE bird abundances and distribution per site, there are six.
N.B. Legend not present due to crazy amount of data. It needed messing with.

Pushing that aside (for now), I decided to have a look at recreational activities both from the Excel spreadsheet and the photocopied annotated survey sheets so I could gauge approximate distribution of activity per site. Again, I've done this using the large 1:50,000 OS map to look at the generalised picture rather than each localised site...

That's better with a legend.

I can use these shapefiles for the localised maps since they're pretty much in the right locations anyway. I may have to have a fiddle around with some mind. I was also thinking of splitting up the EMS activity maps into two - shore-based recreational activities and water-based recreational activities. Then there would have to be one for fishing/harvesting/collecting since there are a few sea coal collectors, bait diggers, anglers [well, one] etc.

We'll see.

I need to create the shapefiles now for bird counts at the start and the end of each survey and to locate these on the localised maps. Then, somehow, I need to map on recreational disturbance. I'm sure I can fathom this out... There's a clever person hiding somewhere inside...

Teesmouth & Cleveland Coast EMS: Bird disturbance surveys with Natural England.

I know it hasn't been long since my last update but I should really talk about my trip to Redcar before I get too busy (or maybe I am just using this as a useful procrastination tool... who knows?) Anyway, I have mentioned it before in a previous post but alas I shall repeat myself (hey, it beats reading a rather dry paper about IUU fishing... I need to find a better one) - As part of my MSc in Marine Environmental Management I have to undertake a 8-10 week project placement (not work experience per se, but a project) where I do research and subsequently write it up into a 5000 word report (essentially another dissertation). Well, I was in a little bit of a predicament with what I should go for and in the end I decided to go with Natural England (and INCA) and do a project assessing the impacts of recreational activities on the overwintering and migratory birds at the Teesmouth and Cleveland Coast European Marine Site (EMS). This would mainly be through the use of spatial analysis (ArcGIS) and statistical analysis (oh joy ~ I can use either SPSS or, if I feel confident in doing so, 'R'). Well, after contacting the current EMS project officer, Katherine (who is sadly leaving at the start of next month) we decided on a date to go over some of the methodology and meet with some of the team, mainly to introduce myself and get some direction for my actual placement.

So, Tuesday morning I got up bright and early, jumped in the shower and made myself look quite respectable (I opted for practicality, comfort and a little bit of style if that's what you'd call it). I wasn't at all sure of the weather (come on, it's England, we can have all seasons in an hour) so boots and leather jacket it was. I wolfed down some breakfast (thank you lifesaver of a boyfriend), grabbed my Kindle for some light reading on the train (Little Women) shoved this and that into my bag and proceeded to train station with about 10-15 minutes to go. Note: This was during rush hour in York, i.e. very very busy indeed, particularly coming through one of the main roads into York... Still, I made it with about 5 minutes to spare (another big thank you to boyfriend who played taxis that morning) and flopped on the train for an hour and 5.

I met with Katherine at Middlesbrough station and we made our way to Redcar Rocks or Redcar 'Scars' as it is commonly known. We took a walk down the beach and set up just before the development of flood defence structures and just before the actual rocks.

Redcar Scars - flood defence development to the right

Behind where we took the bird surveys from - vertical pier, coastal area regeneration.

The scope was set up, binoculars were at hand and survey sheets were out - Katherine showed me how the methodology was actually done for the two hour survey (in summer, just one hour in winter was sufficient). It was important to do a bird count (species present and abundances of each) before the survey started. Species we were looking for included: cormorant, curlew, dunlin, knot, oystercatcher, purple sandpiper, redshank, ringed plover, sanderling, turnstone and then we could mark down other species. During the actual surveying of bird disturbances, we had to record the number of humans in and around the area, what they were doing (i.e. dog walking, angling, diving, bait digging, horse riding etc) and whether their activities disturbed any of the birds and to what extent. It was quite interesting anyway.
 

Redcar Scars - beautiful beach.

In the middle of our survey Catherine and Martin joined us from Natural England and I briefly introduced myself and we had a bit of a chat about the project. We then had a quick drive to another site where we could see the Corus Steelworks. They were pretty magnificent I have to admit. I didn't manage to get a photo of the whole site (or maybe I did, I'll have a root through my phone) but the whole of the area was covered (and I mean covered) in grass from the sand dunes. It was remarkable that a whole ecosystem, a stable ecosystem had successfully established on the waste products of such industry.

Redcar Corus Steelworks and the South Gare (I think?) sand dunes, an ecosystem built on the slag (waste products) from the industry.

We had a bit of a walk down Coatham Sands, Bran Sands and South Gare (it was extremely windy but pretty tranquil and the weather was perfect) and I really was in awe with the scenery. Unfortunately we arrived at this site at mid-tide so it was neither high or low tide. We couldn't actually do a survey due to this, however we did spot several hundred oystercatcher roosting on an exposed area of rock.

Once we had finished having a look around this site, we quickly piled in the car and head towards one of the booked rooms where we could meet Mike (also from Natural England), do the formal introductions to him and the rest of the team and discuss which direction I could take my placement. I still need to have a proper think about this but I have plenty of time. I then sat through their meeting reviewing the methodology and assessing whether aspects of it needed changing (simplification, replicates, further investigations etc). We then discussed my project and what I need out of it regarding the MSc assignment (I said I didn't know, Rach just forgot to check the VLE didn't she? Silly thing!) and I sat through their discussion of Katherine's Code of Conduct (CoC) that she had formulated - it looked great! It was a voluntary CoC for all recreational users of the beach, highlighting the problems of their activity, recommendations for where they should do it (i.e. further up the beach, away from feeding birds etc) and other considerations. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it even if I did go a little quiet when it came to discussing improvements. Still, it was a great experience for me to sit through a typical EMS meeting like that.

I'm currently in the process of penning an e-mail to those I met on Tuesday thanking them for the day and giving them a little more information on what my project requires and although it states that this is not work experience I would definitely like to get some work experience alongside doing my project. I mean, hey, I might not get a chance like this again!

Summer placement; The impacts of recreational activities on overwintering and migratory waterbirds at the Teesmouth and Cleveland Coast European Marine Site

Right, I've got myself into a little bit of a dilemma now. I originally ushered this idea away since I didn't think I'd a) enjoy it or b) be efficient enough in GIS or 'R' to do it. Upon speaking to Julie and a little bit of guidance from those close to me I've given it a bit of thought. If I did this well, as in, I did the study to the best of my ability, I had good references, I ensured that I did GIS correctly and efficiently, then this could really be the start of something....

Anyway, it involves working with the project officer - Katherine Simpson - and the lead [marine] advisor - Dr Catherine Scott of Natural England - doing a series of statistical analyses on the survey results undertaken in order to assess the impacts of anthropogenic recreational activity on this site. I'll be mapping the recreational activities and bird locations in ArcGIS and I would be developing a map of recreational activities occurring throughout the EMS (European Marine Site), identifying hot spots of bird locations and assess the impacts according to this. I reckon there would be some degree of research (to predict the impact) as well as to set certain areas where human activity should be restricted...

I'm stuck in the middle of the two really... I need to decide between fun and not particularly relevant, or desk-based (where? York? Redcar? I don't know!) yet skill-building... I think the latter will prove more useful in life right?