At Robin, we put our radars through hundreds of iterations to keep performance at the cutting edge. In that way, our systems are bound to the wildlife they protect.
Like our technologies, wildlife undergoes continuous cycles of change to survive and thrive in a challenging world. Though the natural world is a resilient one, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to protect it.
Wind farm development is one critical example. Though these giants of green energy preserve in one sense, their construction and operation put elements of the natural world in danger. As wind energy develops, so does the threat to wildlife, especially birds.
For our Onboarding Specialist, Jens van Erp, understanding avian life is key to striking a balance between essential human infrastructure and wildlife preservation. With the important role of getting users up to speed with MAX, he tells us how radar can transform avian research to have a far-reaching ecological impact.
Jens is the connecting piece between our development teams and the users of our bird radars. “I help users understand the radar and the data it’s collecting, so they get the very most out of it.
“It’s my job to understand what our clients need from our systems, keeping track of any functionalities they might be missing. I gather these insights and bring them back to our Research & Development teams to keep improving our product.”
And Jens is the perfect man for the job. He’s been on both sides of our system as a provider and a user.
Plugging a research gap
“Radar fills an interesting and unique niche in monitoring birds.”
Gathering data on bird behaviour is essential to mitigating the adverse effects of human development, but it demands continuous monitoring, day and night, in remote locations and tricky terrains. Jens says, that’s exactly where radar starts to shine: “Radar tracks birds continuously and autonomously, for years. It collects a very strong temporal data set.
“Before radar, we studied birds via visual observations, limited firstly by daylight and secondly by time. It’s a lot to ask to have someone stationed at sea for two years!
“GPS is another way to track birds and discover specific life behaviours. It’s valuable, but unfeasible to tag more than say a few hundred. Collective bird behaviours can happen in billions.
“Radar tracks flocks of thousands, indicating bird number, flight path, altitude, speed, and more. It’s therefore particularly helpful in answering questions about collision risk. The data it gathers can inform collision risk models that determine how much time birds spend in the rotor-swept-zone (RSZ): airspace within the turbine’s spin.”
Robin’s 3D avian radar, MAX, has been designed to support users in the here and now, and far beyond. “MAX shows users exactly what’s happening in real-time with various filters, but it also logs everything,” says Jens.
“It creates heat maps and daily reports of bird activity in the Report Viewer, and key moments of interest can be accessed and reviewed in the Bird Viewer.
“Then we have expert users,” smiles Jens, “they dive even deeper into MAX’s database. Every moment of bird activity belongs to them, they can use it however they need and we’re on hand to help navigate that data.”
Pushing research to the MAX
“We have amazing visuals of 3D migrations and behaviours like thermal soaring.”
MAX provides 3D, 360° coverage so users track bird (or bat) movements in detail all around, all year round. “MAX comes into its own when we pair the data it collects with expertise to explain behaviours and unpick patterns.
“We have these amazing visuals of migration in 3D. MAX even captures clear specific behaviours like thermal soaring and in a lot of ways that’s phenomenal. It offers insights that we might not expect when using other methods like visual observation and GPS.
“We’ve had instances where clients have been surprised by data recorded, for example, under the cover of night, because they’d never seen it before. Like our customers, we’re learning all the time.”
Jens says there’s no certainty about the way birds will interact with human infrastructure, it takes careful research and tailored setups to get those answers. “Deploying and calibrating our avian radar depends on hundreds of settings, we work closely to finetune them for optimal performance against unique applications and environments.
“We’re getting more and more experience about what particular settings work for specific environments. There are still steps to be made, and we will never stop improving in that sense.”
From Australian Bats to Chilean Condors
“We have some really exciting projects happening right now with MAX.”
Empowering Bird Control
“We’re implementing our systems at different airports to mitigate the risk of bird strikes, particularly with geese, that can fly in large flocks over runways. We’re working hard to ensure MAX provides a good global view of activity for bird control teams."
Conserving the Condor
“We’re also deploying two MAX systems in the south of Chile for the development of a wind park. Their site holds huge potential for green energy, but they also have several vulnerable migrating species local to it, including their national bird, the Condor. This is the largest flying bird in the world. We’re looking closely at ways to help identify that species using MAX, implementing a shut-down-on-demand system to keep them safe.”
Studying Spillover in Bats
“We have a really interesting project in Australia, where scientists are studying the flying fox. They’re researching key feeding and roosting behaviours to determine the potential spread and risks of disease spillover to other species, and even humans. It’s the first time our radar has been applied to study bats, and we’re already seeing some promising initial results!”
Plucking answers from the air
“I’m a radar aerial ecologist, I study whatever flies in the air with radar.
Jens studied Animal Biology at Wageningen University. Drawn by a fascination with animal movement, he looked at the topic through a unique lens: “I’m relatively technical for a biologist, I tend to look at life almost as if it were a machine.
“I’m interested in how and why animals are moving, with a focus on bird behaviour. This is becoming more pressing because we, as a society, are moving towards renewable energy.
“In the Netherlands, the leading form of renewable energy is wind and we’re developing offshore wind farms at pace. Thankfully, sea-based life is taken into account in this process as we ask questions about how developments like these could impact it.”
For his PhD Jens focused research on the Dutch North Sea, a huge operational and planning site for offshore wind farms. “I began by looking at the number of birds, specifically gulls, flying offshore to distinguish predictable patterns by day, season, and environmental factors, like available daylight.
“Over several years, we looked at movement through and within wind farms, determining if the turbines would cause birds to adapt their flight. With radar, we discovered predictable behavioural patterns.
“Radar can show us what’s happening, but not why. That’s where expert knowledge comes in to contextualise behaviours like breeding cycles and foraging.
“Interestingly, we found there was little to no change in gull movement through wind farms. This isn’t true for all species, though. Each is different, which makes the challenge greater.”
A delicate balance
“If we covered the North Sea in wind farms, sea ducks would have nowhere to go”
“There are two main ways wind farms affect avian life,” says Jens. “The first is collision risk, where birds hit the turning rotors of the turbines. Unfortunately, this usually ends with bird mortality” (bird deaths).
“The second threat is displacement. Some species of birds, like sea ducks, opt to stay away from wind farms. In a way that’s good, because they don’t collide with turbines, but it also means they cannot use the area, which could have been important to them. They could lose potential foraging or roosting grounds.
“When an important site becomes unusable to species, they must try and find that missing resource somewhere else, causing adverse effects and survival penalties.
“Conservation efforts also vary per country. In the Netherlands, we focus on vulnerable and endangered species, but also on bulk. We look at mass migration events in Spring and Autumn, when, mostly songbirds, migrate in billions across Europe.
“If we can prevent collisions when billions are at risk, in terms of quantity we’ve made a big impact. That’s why there are ongoing efforts to predict these migration events and implement clever shutdown procedures that minimise turbine downtime and curb collisions at critical times.”
No silver bullet
“Mitigating impact on birds boils down to a case-by-case situation.”
Jens tells us that protecting birds at wind farms depends entirely on the site and species at risk. “It's a real challenge to study these different aspects under one umbrella.
“To plan a wind farm that takes the unique life and patterns around it into account, we must start from scratch. New data is gathered throughout the year to identify times or locations where birds could be more vulnerable.’’
It’s important to continue monitoring bird activity after construction too, says Jens. “Many bird species are incredibly long-lived, reaching ages of 20 - 40 years.
“A potential impact of a wind farm on nearby populations may not be apparent in the first five years of operating. It could be that it takes 10 to get a true idea. Far-reaching impacts are extremely hard to predict, so we need to keep gathering data to identify them over time.”
Though radar can be essential to a researcher’s toolkit, no technology is infallible. “All sensors have their limitations. Radar has an enormous range, but, like a camera, it sees everything, not just birds. It detects waves, turbines, cows in the adjoining fields, cars. Everything that returns a reflection.
“The larger or more dense an object, the clearer that reflection. The closer a bird flies to a turbine, the more difficult for radar to keep track of it. That’s why radar cannot recognise collisions. There’s no way to distinguish between a collision or whether a track has been lost in the reflection of the turbine.”
That’s why it takes a careful combination of multiple technologies and experienced ecologists to deduce the true impact of human infrastructure on birds.
The Sky is the Limit
“I think radar will play a huge role in ornithology, the research of birds, in future.”
Despite the challenges, Jens believes the potential of specialised bird radar remains untapped. “Ecological research, just like many other fields, is becoming more of a ‘large data science'. It’s getting more common for scientists to tackle large amounts of data in their research.
“As more avian radars are deployed, we’re seeing a sensory network being built that provides a huge pool of data across countries and continents. That’s incredible, but comes with challenges, like extracting relevant information and integrating data across the different systems.
“To utilise the full potential of specialised global radar networks, we also need to overcome some of the restrictions around data sharing. But, I’m a positive thinker,” smiles Jens.
“We see it beginning to happen with weather radars. They’re already integrated as a single network and can detect huge migration events. They’re not able to track individual birds but can see huge clouds of biomass.
“What can look like massive, sudden rain showers is actually the beginning of huge migrations as birds fly into the sky. Because governments generally control weather radars, their data is more available for scientists who can study movements across entire continents. That’s incredible.
“For avian sensors like MAX, there is potential to create that same effect. It could unlock a whole new level of detail on bird flight. I believe we will get there”