Great Duck Island

The College of the Atlantic (COA) is field testing in-situ
sensor networks for habitat monitoring. COA has ongoing
field research programs on several remote islands with
well established on-site infrastructure and logistical support.
Great Duck Island (GDI) (44.09N,68.15W) is a 237 acre island
located 15 km south of Mount Desert Island, Maine.
The Nature Conservancy, the State of Maine and the College
of the Atlantic hold much of the island in joint tenancy.
At GDI, we are primarily interested in three major questions
in monitoring the Leach’s Storm Petrel [2]:
1. What is the usage pattern of nesting burrows over the
24-72 hour cycle when one or both members of a breeding
pair may alternate incubation duties with feeding
at sea?
2. What changes can be observed in the burrow and surface
environmental parameters during the course of
the approximately 7 month breeding season (April-
October)?
3. What are the differences in the micro-environments
with and without large numbers of nesting petrels?
Each of these questions has unique data needs and suitable
data acquisition rates. Presence/absence data is most
likely acquired through occupancy detection and temperature
differentials between burrows with adult birds and burrows
that contain eggs, chicks, or are empty. Petrels are
unlikely to enter or leave during the light phase of a 24 hour
cycle, but measurements every 5-10 minutes during the late
evening and early morning are needed to capture time of
entry or exit. More general environmental differentials between
burrow and surface conditions during the extended
breeding season can be captured by records every 2-4 hours,
while differences between “popular” and “unpopular” sites
benefit from hourly sampling, especially at the beginning of
the breeding season.
It is unlikely that any one parameter recorded by wireless
sensors could determine why petrels choose a specific nest
site, rather we hope that by making multiple measurements
of many variables we will be able to develop predictive models.
These models will correlate which conditions seabirds
prefer.