Avian migration and commercial aviation
Aircraft collisions with birds pose obvious risks to the safety of humans and wildlife. In “Migratory Canada geese cause crash of US Airways Flight 1549”, a paper published in the August issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Dr. Peter Marra and his colleagues conducted a forensic investigation of a birdstrike event, related to the highly publicized ditching of a commercial jetliner in New York City’s Hudson River earlier this year. Using specialized analytical techniques, Dr. Marra’s team examined tissues and other clues obtained at the scene to learn more about the birds involved – information that could be useful in determining proper management/mitigation strategies. In this month’s edition of Beyond the Frontier, listen to Dr. Marra discuss this detective story, and describe his plans for future research.
The study of phenology is exceedingly complex, in part because of its intrinsic variability, interactions between numerous biotic and abiotic factors, and multiple scales at which observations are recorded. In this month’s installment of Beyond the Frontier, listen to Dr. Jeffrey Morisette and Dr. Andrew Richardson discuss recent technological advances in phenological analyses, as reported in their paper published in the June 2009 issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, entitled “Tracking the rhythm of the seasons in the face of global change: phenological research in the 21st century”. In addition to explaining phenology’s importance, the authors also describe some of the key challenges associated with predicting these recurring biological events.
