Our partners at the Appalachian Conservation Institute have built their brand-new bird banding lab with our help. Listen to Associate Director Quentin Miller share how Skytec’s technology empowered ACI to pick the ideal location for their lab.
Using Esri’s ArcGIS Field Maps app and satellite imagery, ACI and Skytec worked together to find a spot that was accessible by old mining roads and rich in diverse ecosystems, including early successional forests with tulip poplars and maples, bluff lines with mountain laurels, and a woodland plateau forest with pine, oak, and hickory trees. The diversity of habitat means that ACI will be more likely to catch a variety of bird types.
After identifying a likely location, the ACI team began ground-truthing the digitally mapped road and terrain layers. Now, the bird lab is nearly complete, and 10 bird banding lanes are up and running. See their bird banding lab come to life in this video: