Engineering Commons^™

Evaluating Features For Broad Species Based Classification Of Bird Observations Using Dual-Polarized Doppler Weather Radar, Sheila Werth

Masters Theses

Wind energy is one of the fastest-growing segments of the world energy market; however, wind energy facilities can have detrimental effects on wildlife, especially birds and bats. The ability to monitor vulnerable species in the vicinity of proposed wind sites could enable site selection that favors more vulnerable species, but current monitoring tools lack this classification capability. This work analyzes polarimetric and Doppler measurements of migrating birds for species based variation.

A novel two stage feature extraction technique was developed to enable comparison between birds. Stage one involves mapping time changing radar measurements to the birds behavioral state in time …