Web apps

The SEATRACK web-applications are intended to provide open access to the project’s results in a manner that is simple to use and understand.

The application allows users to select results for different species, years, seasons, and colonies and display them on a map. The maps depict kernel distributions or probability density functions overlaid over all available data points that are based on the selection criteria.

The polygons displayed represent, with increasing colour intensity, the 25%, 50% and 75% probability contours of these functions. In other words, the maps display the likelihood of birds within a given selection being in the area given the data available.

The application allows for comparison of up to eight selections displaying the different distributions in differently colored polygons on the map. To add a new selection with different criteria use the red “plus” button in the bottom right corner of the selection bar and another kernel layer is added to the map.

Information about the selection, such as the number of valid individual locations, number of colonies, individuals, days included in the selection is shown on the bottom of selection bar to the left of the map. Maps displaying several seasons (i.e. “all seasons”) and/or several colonies (i.e. “all colonies”) are composites of included individual seasons and/or colonies with data.

The application allows the users to explore monthly large-scale distribution of six pelagic seabird species. The maps show monthly estimates of the density of adult birds from a user-defined selection of breeding colonies or areas. These are based on models build with annual tracking data of adult seabirds from a sample of colonies in the North Atlantic combined with estimates of population size.

The methods are described in Fauchald et al. 2021 MEPS. The estimates represent large-scale values averaged over multiple years and do not account for young immature birds, and hence cannot be used to predict the exact density of birds in any location.