The goal of AKaerial is to provide a transparent and repeatable workflow to generate, visualize, and report out estimates from the suite of aerial surveys undertaken by the Division of Migratory Bird Management (MBM) in the Alaska Region of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Pilots and observers in the Alaska Region have been collecting aerial survey data on waterfowl for over 50 years. In general, a pilot and observer fly low-level transects over a designated habitat-based study area (usually breeding grounds) and record observations of single drakes (or single birds for monomorphic species), breeding pairs, and flocks. Observations are summarized as densities, and densities are extrapolated to population indices. Resultant indices are sometimes used in harvest management decisions by both state and federal agencies. AKaerial was created not only to streamline these steps, but to provide a transparent, repeatable, and defensible alternative to past estimate-generating processes.
The most likely use of AKaerial would be to take advantage of the historic tables of estimates for projects on the Arctic Coastal Plain (ACPHistoric, 2007-2023), Copper River Delta (CRDHistoric, 1986-2023), Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta for ducks (YKDHistoric, 1988-2023) and geese (YKGHistoric, 1985-2023), and Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey (WBPHSHistoric, 1957-2023). AKaerial includes figure-, table-, and map-generating functions that are designed to visualize data, design files, and estimates as a quality control step as well as for the production of reports, presentations, and manuscripts.
AKaerial also includes functions (GreenLight, GreenLightScribe) that provide a rigorous and documented quality control process. This results in a structured and consistent treatment of both raw transcribed and archived data files throughout the data life cycle.
AKaerial is under constant development. It will have occasional bugs and other issues. Please report any issues or feature requests on the AKaerial Github repository.
You can install the released version of AKaerial from GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("USFWS/AKaerial", ref = "master", build_vignettes = TRUE)And the development version from GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("USFWS/AKaerial", ref = "development", build_vignettes = TRUE)Or from the included tar.gz release archive.
Then explore the vignettes with:
vignette("IntroToAKaerial", package="AKaerial")The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) GitHub project code is provided on an “as is” basis and the user assumes responsibility for its use. FWS has relinquished control of the information and no longer has responsibility to protect the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of the information. Any reference to specific commercial products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply their endorsement, recommendation or favoring by FWS. The FWS seal and logo shall not be used in any manner to imply endorsement of any commercial product or activity by FWS or the United States Government.
This project is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license.