Sandhill crane migration

• Overview of sandhill cranes
  • 
• Data
  • Leg bands that use global position system to recored location and altitude
  • Five inidivdual birds during fall migration 2013
  • Data is available from USGS.
  • Lets take a look at the data using the code below

  library(maps)
  library(maptools)
  library(lubridate)
  library(plotKML)
  
  # Load sandhill crane data
  # https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/59a472d7e4b077f005673486
  url <- "https://www.dropbox.com/s/f59c85ibevtx636/sacr_locations.csv?dl=1"
  df.sacr <- read.csv(url)
  
  head(df.sacr)

  ##    Crane           Time         X        Y
  ## 1 100840  9/1/2013 0:59 -2663.988 3273.347
  ## 2 100840 9/1/2013 12:56 -2665.651 3273.454
  ## 3 100840 9/1/2013 18:54 -2666.122 3271.090
  ## 4 100840  9/2/2013 6:50 -2663.497 3270.656
  ## 5 100840 9/2/2013 12:50 -2665.664 3271.351
  ## 6 100840  9/3/2013 0:48 -2663.884 3272.595

  # Change date/time to class 'POSIXct'
  df.sacr$Time <- mdy_hm(df.sacr$Time, tz = "America/Chicago")
  
  
  
  pt.sacr <- SpatialPointsDataFrame(coords = df.sacr[, 3:4], data = data.frame(crane = df.sacr$Crane, 
      time = df.sacr$Time), proj4string = CRS("+proj=aeqd +lat_0=51 +lon_0=-110 +ellps=GRS80 +units=km +no_defs"))
  
  # Get map of World
  map.world <- map("world", fill = TRUE, plot = FALSE)  #projection = 'azequalarea', plot = FALSE)orientation = c(51,-101,0)
  sf.world <- map2SpatialPolygons(map.world, IDs = map.world$names)
  map.crs <- CRS("+proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +no_defs +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0")
  
  # Plot data for crane 100840 on world map
  plot(sf.world, xlim = c(-200, -101), ylim = c(29.3, 68.5))
  plot(spTransform(pt.sacr, map.crs)[which(df.sacr$Crane == 100840), ], add = TRUE)

  

  # View data for crane 100840 in google earth
  kml(pt.sacr)

• What research questions related to sandhill crane migration could be answered using these data?
  • Group discussion