Computer Generated Movies to Display Biotelemetry Data

摘要

The three dimensional nature of biotelemetry data (x, y, time) makes them difficult to comprehend. Graphic displays provide a means of extracting information and analyzing biotelemetry data. The extensive computer graphics facilities at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory have been utilized to analyze elk biotelemetry data. Fixes have been taken weekly for 14 months on 14 animals'. The inadequacy of still graphic displays to portray the time dimension of this data has lead to the use of computer generated movies to help grasp time relationships. A computer movie of the data from one animal demonstrates habitat use as a function of time, while a movie of 2 or more animals illustrates the correlations between the animals movements. About 2 hours of computer time were required to generate the movies for each animal for 1 year of data. The cost of the movies is quite small relative to the cost of collecting the data, so that computer generated movies are a reasonable method to depict biotelemetry data. (ERA citation 04:047406)