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Shorebird Migration Patterns in Response to Climate Change: A Modeling ApproachThe availability of satellite remote sensing observations at multiple spatial and temporal scales, coupled with advances in climate modeling and information technologies offer new opportunities for the application of mechanistic models to predict how continental scale bird migration patterns may change in response to environmental change. In earlier studies, we explored the phenotypic plasticity of a migratory population of Pectoral sandpipers by simulating the movement patterns of an ensemble of 10,000 individual birds in response to changes in stopover locations as an indicator of the impacts of wetland loss and inter-annual variability on the fitness of migratory shorebirds. We used an individual based, biophysical migration model, driven by remotely sensed land surface data, climate data, and biological field data. Mean stop-over durations and stop-over frequency with latitude predicted from our model for nominal cases were consistent with results reported in the literature and available field data. In this study, we take advantage of new computing capabilities enabled by recent GP-GPU computing paradigms and commodity hardware (general purchase computing on graphics processing units). Several aspects of our individual based (agent modeling) approach lend themselves well to GP-GPU computing. We have been able to allocate compute-intensive tasks to the graphics processing units, and now simulate ensembles of 400,000 birds at varying spatial resolutions along the central North American flyway. We are incorporating additional, species specific, mechanistic processes to better reflect the processes underlying bird phenotypic plasticity responses to different climate change scenarios in the central U.S.
Document ID
20100026668
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Smith, James A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
March 23, 2010
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Meeting Information
Meeting: Wildlife Society 17th Annual Conference
Location: Snowbird, UT
Country: United States
Start Date: October 2, 2010
End Date: October 6, 2010
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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