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NASA Assists Search for Woodpecker Thought to be Extinct
August 07, 2006Unlike its more famous cartoon cousin Woody the Woodpecker, the ivory-billed woodpecker is thought to be extinct, or so most experts have believed for over half a century.
But last month scientists from NASA and the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., launched a project to identify possible areas where the woodpecker might be living. Finding these habitat areas will guide future searches for the bird and help determine if it is really extinct or has survived an elusive existence.
The question of whether the species still exists started when a kayaker reported spotting the woodpecker along Arkansas' Cache River in 2004. That sighting spawned an intensive search for the species by wildlife conservationists, bird watchers, field biologists and others.
In June a research aircraft flew over delta regions of the lower Mississippi River to track possible areas of habitat suitable for the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the largest and most regal members of the woodpecker family. The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland used NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS) onboard the aircraft. The instrument uses lasers that send pulses of energy to the Earth's surface. Photons of light from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches and the ground and reflect back to the instrument. By analyzing these returned signals, scientists receive a direct measurement of the height of the forest's leaf covered tree tops, the ground level below and everything in between.
"LVIS is aiding this search effort far beyond what aircraft photos or satellite images can provide in the way of just a two-dimensional rendering of what's below," said Woody Turner, Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. "The laser technology gives us the third dimension, enabling us to better assess the complex vegetation structure the plane flies over." The flights are the latest step in an effort spanning over two years to find absolute evidence that a bird once thought extinct continues to survive.
"We're trying to understand the environment where these birds live or used to live, using LVIS-plotted features like thickness of the ground vegetation and tree-leaf density, in combination with other factors like closeness to water and age of the forest, to determine where we might find them," said Turner.
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NASA
In June a research aircraft flew over delta regions of the lower Mississippi River to track possible areas of habitat suitable for the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the largest and most regal members of the woodpecker family. The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland used NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS) onboard the aircraft. The instrument uses lasers that send pulses of energy to the Earth's surface. Photons of light from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches and the ground and reflect back to the instrument. By analyzing these returned signals, scientists receive a direct measurement of the height of the forest's leaf covered tree tops, the ground level below and everything in between.
"LVIS is aiding this search effort far beyond what aircraft photos or satellite images can provide in the way of just a two-dimensional rendering of what's below," said Woody Turner, Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. "The laser technology gives us the third dimension, enabling us to better assess the complex vegetation structure the plane flies over." The flights are the latest step in an effort spanning over two years to find absolute evidence that a bird once thought extinct continues to survive.
"We're trying to understand the environment where these birds live or used to live, using LVIS-plotted features like thickness of the ground vegetation and tree-leaf density, in combination with other factors like closeness to water and age of the forest, to determine where we might find them," said Turner.
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NASA
Woodpecker Current Events and Woodpecker News RSSClimate change affecting Europe's birds now, say researchers
Climate change is already having a detectable impact on birds across Europe, says a Durham University and RSPB-led scientific team publishing their findings to create the world's first indicator of the climate change impacts on wildlife at a continental scale.
Reliance on unverifiable observations hinders successful conservation of wildlife species
Nearly any evidence of the occurrence of a rare or elusive wildlife species has the tendency to generate a stir. Case in point: in February 2008, remote cameras unexpectedly captured the images of a wolverine in the central Sierra Nevada, an area from which the species was believed to be extinct since 1922.
Lemurs' evolutionary history may shed light on our own
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A case of mistaken identity for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker?
Video evidence that an extinct woodpecker is alive and well in Arkansas, USA may prove to be a case of mistaken identity. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Biology shows how fleeting images thought to be the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis could be another native woodpecker species.
Food for Flight: Monarch Butterfly Migration and Forest Restoration
USDA Forest Service (FS) research in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas suggests that decades of fire suppression have reduced the area's food supply for migrating monarch butterflies-and that restoration efforts that include prescribed burning can reverse this trend.
Elvis the mystery bird has searchers scouring Arkansas habitats for signs of roosts, nests or stripped bark
Elvis. That is the nickname that Larry Mallard, refuge manager for the White River National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Arkansas, uses for the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), now being sought in Mallard's woods by Cornell Lab of Ornithology staffers and volunteers.
New study pinpoints epicenters of Earth's imminent extinctions
Safeguarding 595 sites around the world would help stave off an imminent global extinction crisis, according to new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Independent researchers confirm the existence of ivory-billed woodpecker
After reviewing new sound recordings from the White River of Arkansas, an independent team of ornithologists has confirmed the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Ecological significance of tool-use in the woodpecker finch Cactospiza pallida
The Woodpecker finch, one of 14 Darwin`s finches of the Galapagos Islands, uses twigs or cactus spines to pry insects and spiders out of tree-holes. The advantage of using tools may seem evident, but empirical evidence is scarce. In a paper soon to appear in Ecology Letters, Tebbich and colleagues present the first study on the ecological relevance of tool-use by a bird species. Woodpecker finches hardly use tools in humid areas where food is abundant and easily accessible. In contrast, in arid coastal areas where food is scarce, Woodpecker finches rely almost exclusively on the extraction of food from bark and tree-holes and use tools frequently. They acquire a greater proportion of food
Green Isle Survives In The Urban Environment
Fortunately, green spots still remain on the map of Moscow tending to be located in the suburbs of the city, in the valleys of the rivers, away from the densely populated communities. Among them there are several little spots which are surrounded by the city being isolated like isles in the ocean. One of them is the forest park of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, which makes part to the Petrovsko-Razumovskoye natural preserve. Long ago the forest was planted especially for the professional training of forestry specialists Russia is famous for. For this purpose the forest was regularly checked up - from time to time the biologists used to count all the plant and animal species in the fore
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