Researchers Use Weather Radar To Track Bat Movements

摘要

When Winifred Frick sits down at her computer to look at radar data from the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, it's not to track a local thunderstorm but to follow bats. A bat ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she uses weather radars to monitor the movements of animals that used to vanish quickly from view as they took to the night sky for daily or seasonal journeys. Her research is part of a new field of study, called aeroecology, that looks at the interactions between flying animals and their airspace.