PELLSTON, Mich. — The University of Michigan Biological Station added a powerful tool to its research arsenal to gather new insights into the movement and behavior of animals that soar.
The historic campus made up of more than 10,000 forested acres about 20 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge installed Motus antennas to its tower by Stockard Lakeside Laboratory on Nov. 2.
The antennas monitor migratory wildlife that are tagged with small, lightweight radio transmitters mapping journeys that can span hundreds or thousands of miles each year.
In collaboration with Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch (MSRW), UMBS has joined the global Motus network that stretches across North America, Central and South America, Europe and Australia —a science community transforming how we understand and protect biodiversity.
“We’re connecting local conservation with global science. Joining these sorts of international research communities to collect long-term data is at the heart of our mission and fundamental in the conservation of biodiversity,” said Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the U-M Biological Station. “Understanding the movement of birds at a finer scale enables us to better understand the role birds play in our environment and how that role might be changing.”
The UMBS technology installation is part of an effort led by the Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch to build a series of six towers or receiving stations in the area where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron, a critical, narrow corridor for migrating birds to cross the Great Lakes and avoid flying over wider water expanses. Other partners include the U.S. Forest Service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
The installation of six new antennas in the Straits region this fall marks an expansion to a statewide network known as the Michigan Motus Array established several years ago with locations along Lake Michigan and other parts of the state by Rich Keith, director of the Kalamazoo Valley Bird Observatory, and the Kalamazoo Nature Center to help track and conserve migratory wildlife.
The Michigan Motus Array has 26 stations up and running, with two more to be completed next spring.
“There's a line or ‘virtual fence’ from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, and now the line across the Straits,” Keith said, “plus some in the Upper Peninsula and a couple others.”
Once completed, the MSRW towers will offer a clearer picture of how wildlife migrates through the Straits region.
UMBS serves as a central inland site on the migratory path that takes birds to and from their summer breeding grounds and wintering grounds. Many pass over or stop at UMBS during their journeys.
The new antennas use automated radio telemetry to collect data from tags. The devices can detect tagged wildlife from up to ten miles away, automatically recording their identity, time and travel direction into the shared network, a central database that maximizes access and use.
“We need to know where the birds breed, stopover and over-winter,” said Scott Davis, director of Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch, a nonprofit organization that has monitored the migration of raptors, songbirds and waterfowl in the Straits region since the 1980s. “It’s easy with reindeer or other large mammals — a lot harder with birds. The Motus network is intended to help us map and better understand the migratory routes of important bird species, and maybe even bats and insects.”
The Motus network primarily monitors the population and migration of birds including everything from eagles to warblers, owls and hawks. But Motus is developing transmitter tags that can also be used on insects like butterflies and dragonflies.
Keith said this network helps researchers fill knowledge gaps related to the ecology, evolution and conservation of migratory species.
For example, researchers can use the data to analyze which habitats are the most important, the effect of weather patterns on migration, and challenges birds face — such as changes to ecosystems like deforestation and access to food in the wintering and breeding ranges — that could be contributing to declining population trends.
“By revealing new insights, scientists can help secure the future of these birds that are so important to us throughout Michigan,” Keith said.
Dr. Ben Winger, a professor in the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and curator of birds in the Museum of Zoology, moves researchers in his Ann Arbor laboratory up to UMBS each spring to do field work on the ground.
The location gives the team access to many kinds of habitat to help unlock migration mysteries.
The researchers deploy and recapture lightweight geolocators attached like mini-backpacks on a suite of migratory songbirds that breed in the boreal forests of northern Michigan.
“A Motus tower literally puts UMBS 'on the map' for migration research, as researchers tracking migratory birds will now know every time a tagged bird migrates near the station,” Winger said.
"Additionally, the tower will enable exciting research on UMBS grounds, allowing researchers to study dispersal patterns and arrival and departure patterns of animals using UMBS.”
For more information about the Motus network and the Mackinac Straits Raptor Watch, visit motus.org and mackinacraptorwatch.org.
The University of Michigan Biological Station collects long-term data for a wide variety of national and international research projects.
As one example, UMBS was established as a National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) site in 1979.
For nearly 50 years, UMBS has collected samples and processed data as part of a project that monitors acid precipitation at more than 250 locations across the country.
Global researchers have used the NADP network to track pollution, monitor deposition of airborne microplastics, explore how changing precipitation may change nutrient loads in lakes, and measure PFAS in rainwater.
The data informed Congress’s 1990 decision to amend the Clean Air Act, and a 2010 EPA report suggested that the amendment was a success: fossil fuel emissions were down by 50%, damaged ecosystems were bouncing back, and heart attacks and respiratory conditions attributed to poor air quality were down by tens of thousands of cases per year.
Another example of long-term collaborative data collection at UMBS includes a hallmark of UMBS research infrastructure. In 1998, UMBS installed a 150-foot AmeriFlux tower, which now provides one of the highest quality long-term datasets on forest carbon dynamics in the world.
The UMBS tower is one of AmeriFlux’s Core Sites where ongoing observations have been updated regularly for nearly three decades. The international network measures ecosystem carbon dioxide, water and energy fluxes as well as other exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere. Its data are downloaded every day by scientists to understand how ecosystems respond to climate change and to improve the performance of models that predict climate change and interpret satellite-borne observations on the state of our ecosystem.
The AmeriFlux network spans North, South and Central America. It connects research on field sites representing major climate and ecological biomes, including tundra, grasslands, savanna, crops, and conifer, deciduous, and tropical forests.
Earlier this year, UMBS expanded its AmeriFlux footprint by helping connect the Great Lakes to the network, deploying “eddy covariance” research infrastructure to two research towers that UMBS helps maintain on Lake Superior.
The University of Michigan Biological Station serves as a gathering place to learn from the natural world, advance research and education, and inspire action. We leverage over a century of research and transformative experiences to drive discoveries and solutions to benefit Michigan and beyond.
Our vast campus engages all of the senses. Its remote, natural setting nurtures deep thought and scientific discovery.
Founded in 1909, UMBS supports long-term research and education through immersive, field-based courses and features state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for data collection and analysis to help any field researcher be productive. It is where students and scientists from across the globe live and work as a community to learn from the place.
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