1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. ASAC_484

Description

Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 484
See the link below for public details on this project.

---- Public Summary from Project ----
Emperor penguins are the only birds that breed in the Antarctic winter. They feed mainly on fish and squid but also ingest krill. Changes in food availability due to oceanographic or climatic factors, or to the extent of sea ice (through the processes of global warming) will have a direct impact on the breeding success and population size of the penguins. By counting the number of males that incubate at mid-winter each year, we can monitor trends in their population size. Counts of fledglings in spring (November) tell us how successful the penguins bred.

The download file contains an excel spreadsheet which presents a summary of known Emperor Penguin colonies in the area of the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT), and a file which details counts of male emperor penguins at the Taylor Glacier colony.

A description of the column headings used in the spreadsheet is below.

Colony: Colony name

lat, long: latitude and longitude of colony

discovered: date colony was discovered

current est pop (BP): Current estimated population size in breeding pairs - current as at date the colony was last seen

last seen: date the colony was last seen

counting method: method used to count the breeding pairs in the colony

comments: any applicable comments

reference: references relating to the colony

Taken from the 2009-2010 Progress Report:
Public summary of the season progress:
Population size of colonies fluctuates which is why long term monitoring studies are necessary to detect trends. At the emperor penguin colony at Taylor Glacier, monitored continuously since 1988, a slight downward trend is apparent but is not (yet?) statistically significant. The colony was visited three times: once in winter to obtain an estimate of the number of adults in the colony (roughly equivalent to the number of breeding pairs), and twice during the late chick rearing season to estimate breeding success. The count of adults in 2009 was the lowest on record. Reasons for this are still unknown.

Quality

Taken from the 2009-2010 Progress Report:
Field work:
The colony at Taylor Glacier was visited on 26 June, 28 Oct and 1 Dec. On all three occasions, all birds present in the colony were photographed. Visits to the colony lasted no more than 2 hours and personnel kept at the appropriate distance to avoid disturbance.

This season, it was possible for the first time since 2005 to reach Taylor Glacier in early December. In five previous seasons, snow and fast ice conditions had made such a late visit impossible. Two visits during the chick rearing season allowed us to compare chick numbers in October with those present in early December and estimate the rate of loss at this stage of the breeding season.

Two major changes will take place over the next years: first, we shall test the deployment of fixed cameras at Taylor Glacier for suitability of obtaining information we have so far not been able to collect (e.g. time of arrival). Second, other colonies will be included in the monitoring study (e.g. Auster, Amanda Bay).

Access

The excel spreadsheet of colony summaries and Taylor Glacier counts are publicly available for download from the provided URL.

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 1988-06-21 - Stop date: 2010-11-30

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > BIRDS
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOSYSTEMS > MARINE ECOSYSTEMS > COASTAL
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOSYSTEMS > MARINE ECOSYSTEMS > PELAGIC
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS > SPECIES/POPULATION INTERACTIONS > EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION
• EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > BIRDS > PENGUINS

Use Constraints

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=ASAC_484 when using these data.