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Jason Minton Biology Department University of North Carolina at Wilmington |
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Jason Minton Biology Department University of North Carolina at Wilmington |
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About myself...
During and shortly after my undergraduate stay at the University of California in Santa Cruz, I worked for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group (SCPBRG) and developed an interest in birds, and raptors in particular. After graduation I went to work at the Wild Bird Society of Japan in Tokyo. There I experienced ornithology while working in the society’s Research Center under Dr. Hiroyoshi Higuchi (now at the University of Tokyo) on several research projects, including migration studies of cranes in Asia. In 1995 I transferred to the International Center headed by Mr. Noritaka Ichida, and began to apply the results of our migratory research to the conservation of crane habitat in China, through cooperative efforts of WBSJ and the International Crane Foundation (ICF). It was an excellent chance for me to experience how the conservation process goes from pure research to real application.
My thesis research...
Habitat Relationships of Cranes in Northeast Asia
Summary
I will use remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the variation in habitat use among four species of crane (Siberian Crane Grus leucogeranus, White-naped Crane G. vipio, Red-crowned Crane G. japonensis, Hooded Crane G. monacha) in Asia for three habitat variables: Land cover, Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) and fragmentation.
Background
There are 15 extant species of cranes (Aves: Gruidae), but seven are classified as threatened or endangered (Collar et al. 1994). Most species of cranes rely on grasslands or wetlands during each phase of their annual lifecycle, and because wetlands have been highly altered by human activities this appears to be a causal factor in the decrease of many crane species (Harris 1994, Meine and Archibald 1996).
Five species of cranes, four of which are considered threatened or endangered (Collar et al. 1994) occur almost entirely within Northeast Asia: the Siberian Crane (Grus leucogeranus), Red-crowned Crane (G. japonensis), White-naped Crane (G. vipio) and Hooded Crane (G. monacha). This is the greatest concentration of threatened crane species to be found in any single region. These species are all migratory and travel routes up to 3,000 km between wintering and summering sites that transect some of the most remote and politically sensitive areas of the region. In the early 1990's it became feasible to use satellite telemetry to track the movements of large birds, as shown by studies of foraging albatrosses (Jouventin and Weimerskirch 1990), migrating swans (Nowak et al. 1990), and penguins (Davis et al. 1996, Stokes et al. 1998). Satellite transmitters, with the data reception under management of the CNES/Argos (a joint US-French company), were applied to studies of cranes in Asia, thus overcoming the limitations imposed by vast ranges, the sensitivities of the region's governments, and the high mobility of the cranes (Higuchi et al. 1992, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, Higuchi and Minton, in press).
The satellite tracking studies of cranes in Asia were designed to reveal, in as much detail as possible, the migration routes and important stop-over sites of the species. Thus, published reports have focused primarily on those subjects and have filled large gaps in knowledge of migration in the region. Satellite tracking data have been analyzed to show the detailed spring migration routes of White-naped and Hooded Cranes between wintering areas in Japan and summering areas in China and Russia (Higuchi et al. 1992), the fall migration of two species from Russian staging sites to their wintering sites (Higuchi et al. 1996), the importance of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) for two species of cranes (Higuchi et al. 1996, Higuchi and Minton, in press), the migration routes of Siberian Cranes (Wild Bird Society of Japan, unpublished data) and Demoiselle Cranes migrating from the Asian Steppes to India (Kanai et al., in press).
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Migration routes of White-naped Crane Grus
vipio from their wintering site in Izumi, Japan, as
determined by satellite tracking research. Modified from
Higuchi et al. 1992. Migration routes in Asia had been
researched by banding studies (Ozaki 1991a,b) and
migration routes had been surmised, but satellite
tracking gave precise and accurate routes as well as
duration of each birds migration. This data has been
important for realizing linkages between wintering,
stop-over and summering areas, and conservation projects
such as the Crane Flyway Network have been able to use
this data for habitat conservation. The research project was organized by the Wild Bird Society of Japan in cooperation with other Japanese and national research and conservation organizations, including the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology (Japan), the Khingansky Nature Reserve (Russia), the Muraviovka Nature Park (Russia) and researchers around Lake Khanka (Russia). The work was made possible by funding from Japanese corporations such as NEC, Yomiuri Shimbun, and NTT. While I was employed at the WBSJ, I was involved with crane capture, data processing, analysis and conservation applications in China. The WBSJ cooperated with the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (Japan; now JBIC) and the Heilongjiang General Bureau of Land Reclamation (China) to avoid and mitigate impacts of agricultural development related to Overseas Development Assistance in the Sanjiang Plain, which was identified as an important breeding site for cranes that wintered in Japan. |
Despite the thorough treatment of migration routes for tracked species, the satellite data have received only preliminary analyses at a few sites regarding its potential to indicate local use patterns; for example, habitat preference or daily movements between habitat types. The only analyses in this vein to date were intended to show the practicality of combining satellite location data with satellite images of wetlands (Kondoh et al. 1994, Kanai et al. 1994), and thus did not treat the subject comprehensively. Kanai et al. (1994) showed that 1 adult and 2 juvenile cranes preferred marsh types with different moisture levels, and proposed that further studies be conducted to identify the cranes’ preferences in relation to natural habitat and human land-use patterns, and to use this information in conservation planning. Higuchi and Minton (in press) showed the importance of the DMZ as a refuge for wintering Red-crowned Cranes, after analyzing local movement patterns, but did not analyze habitat characteristics or use patterns in more detail.
Methods
I will utilize the data gathered during the previous satellite tracking research projects between 1991-1996. I will look at the data on a much larger scale than has been done in the past, to show crane habitat preferences at a large scale. I will answer questions about crane migration and behavior using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and statistics to overlay and analyze the crane location data and remotely sensed imagery. For habitat variables I will use characteristics discernable from satellite images, namely normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI; a measure of vegetation cover), land-cover type and fragmentation. I will use images from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) that are available to researchers without cost through a wonderful project under the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Global Land Cover Characterization Project (GLCC), and the Global Land 1-km AVHRR Project. Fragmentation will be calculated using the FRAGSTATS software developed by the USDA (1995, developed by Marks and McGarigal).
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Example of an overlay of a single
crane's location data (purple dots) at a small scale
(left) to show migration routes, and at a large scale
(right inset). Essentially I can identify the habitat
used by the crane after matching up the location dot with
the map pixel. In actuality, I will create a buffer
around the locations and extract the habitat data within
that area in order to mitigate concerns about data
resolution and non-independance of location data. The
base image is a Global Land Cover Classification image
from the USGS GLCC Project, based on AVHRR data with a 1
km resolution. ArcView software (ESRI) will be used to
overlay data sets and extract habitat characteristics
from within the buffered area around the crane locations.
A histogram representing the frequency of occurrence for each habitat type will be extracted for each crane within each species, and will then be compared between species. Two of my habitat characteristics, NDVI and Land-cover, can come directly from the USGS images, but habitat fragmentation values will be created by application of the software FRAGSTATS (USDA 1995, developed by Marks and McGarigal). The software derives index values related to size, shape, distribution and frequency of habitat patches from an input raster image. |
Ecological questions to address
For example, White-naped Cranes and Red-crowned Cranes breed in the same local areas but wintering sites are exclusive. Migration sites are often shared, but differences in cranes’ use of habitats within those sites have not been quantified. Similarly, at important wintering sites such as Poyang Lake on the Yangtze River, where the Three Gorges Dam has the potential of altering hydrology of the ecosystem, there is a lack of data on local movements and differing requirements of the several species of cranes found at the site (Meine and Archibald 1996).
If roosting and foraging sites vary in characteristics the practical applications of this information for reserve design are obvious since all required habitats must be in protected in order to conserve the species.
It is clear that some sites are used for a longer duration than other sites (Higuchi et al. 1992), but the characteristics that may influence this have not been investigated. Characteristics between sites used for varying durations can be compared to suggest if any of these could affect cranes’ use of the sites.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my friends and colleagues at the Wild Bird Society of Japan and the University of Tokyo, including Dr. Hiroyoshi Higuchi, Mr. Noritaka Ichida, Mr. Yozo Tsukamoto, Mr. Yutaka Kanai, Mr. Simba Chan, Mr. Tsuyoshi Fujita, and Mr. Mutsuyuki J. Ueta. Thank you also to those from other organizations and private individuals that supported my professional work on cranes, including Mr. Jim Harris, Dr. George Archibald, Mr. Kiyoaki Ozaki, and Dr. Chong Jong Ryol.
At my new home in North Carolina I am already indebted to so many who have supported my transition here and my research proposal, including my thesis committee Dr. Steve Emslie, Dr. Eric Bolen and Dr. Joanne Halls. Thanks go to Dr. Jim Blum of the statistics department at UNCW, for helping me to understand how my (potential!) overflow of data can be analyzed statistically! Thanks also go to our graduate coordinator, Dr. Robert Roer for administrative and moral support of all graduate students here at UNCW.
Most of all, I thank my wife, who rather foolishly, it would seem, encourages all this birdwatching!
Literature Cited
Collar, N. 1994. Birds to Watch II. BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK.
Davis, L.S., P.D. Boersma, and G.S. Court. 1996. Satellite telemetry of the winter migration of Adelie Penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae). Polar Biology 16:221-225.
Harris, J. 1994. Cranes, people and nature: preserving the balance. Pages 1-14 in H. Higuchi and J. Minton, editors. The Future of Cranes and Wetlands. Wild Bird Society of Japan, Tokyo.
Higuchi, H., K. Ozaki, G. Fujita, M. Soma, N. Kanmuri, and M. Ueta. 1992. Satellite tracking of the migration routes of cranes from southern Japan. Strix 11:1-20.
Higuchi, H., M. Nagendran, A.G. Sorokin, and M. Ueta. 1994a. Satellite tracking of Common Cranes Grus grus migrating north from Keoladeo National Park, India. Pages 26-31 in H. Higuchi and J. Minton, editors. The Future of Cranes and Wetlands. Wild Bird Society of Japan, Tokyo.
Higuchi, H., K. Ozaki, K. Golovuskin, O. Goroshko, V. Krever, J. Minton, M. Ueta, V. Andronov, S. Smirenski, V. Ilyashenko, N. Kanmuri, and G. Archibald. 1994b. The migration routes and important rest-sites of cranes satellite tracked from south-central Russia. Pages 15-25 in H. Higuchi and J. Minton, editors. The Future of Cranes and Wetlands. Wild Bird Society of Japan, Tokyo.
Higuchi, H., K. Ozaki, G. Fujita, J. Minton, M. Ueta, M. Soma, and N. Mita. 1996. Satellite tracking of White-naped Crane migration and the importance of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Conservation Biology 10: 806-812.
Higuchi, H., and J. Minton. In press. The importance of the Korean DMZ to threatened crane species in Northeast Asia. Global Environmental Research (): - .
Jouventin, P., and H. Weimerskirch. 1990. Satellite tracking of Wandering Albatrosses. Nature 343:746-748.
Kanai, Y., M. Nagendran, J. Minton, A. Bold. 2000. Satellite tracking the migration routes of Demoiselle Cranes in Eurasia. Global Environmental Research (): - .
Kanai, Y., A. Kondoh and H. Higuchi. 1994. Analysis of crane habitat using satellite images. Pages 72-85 in H. Higuchi and J. Minton, editors. The Future of Cranes and Wetlands. Wild Bird Society of Japan, Tokyo.
Kondoh, A., Y. Kanai, and H. Higuchi. 1994. The theory and practice of environmental analysis through Landsat images. Pages 61-71 in H. Higuchi and J. Minton, editors. The Future of Cranes and Wetlands. Wild Bird Society of Japan, Tokyo.
Meine, C.D. and Archibald, G., editors. 1996. The Cranes: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.
Nowak, E., P. Berthold, and U. Querner. 1990. Satellite tracking of migrating Bewick’s Swans. Naturwissenshaften 77:549-550.
Ozaki, K. 1991a. Returns and recoveries of hooded and White-naped Cranes banded in winter at Izumi, Japan. Pages 311-314 in J. Harris, editor. Proceedings 1987 International Crane Workshop. International Crane Foundation, Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA.
Ozaki, K.. 1991b. Migration studies of the Hooded and White-naped Crane in East Asia. Pages 181-184 in N. Maruyama et al, editors. Wildlife and Conservation – Present trends and perspectives. Japan Wildlife Research Center, Tokyo, Japan.
Stokes, D.L, P.D. Boersma and L.S. Davis. 1998. Satellite tracking of Magellanic Penguin migration. Condor 100:376-381.