Aeroecology

Aeroecology is the discipline for studying how airborne life forms utilize and interact with other biotic and abiotic components of the atmosphere. The aerosphere is viewed as habitat and the way that organisms respond to and take advantage of the dynamic aeroscape has relevance to the ecology, evolution, and conservation of many of the world's bird, bat, insect, and plant species. The interactions and properties in the aerosphere, the zone that is closest to the Earth's surface, provide selective pressures that influence the size and shape of organisms, their behavioral, sensory, metabolic, and respiratory functions. In contrast to organisms that spend their entire lives on land or in water, organisms that use the aerosphere are almost immediately affected by changing conditions such as winds, air density, oxygen concentrations, precipitation, air temperature, sunlight, polarized light, moonlight, and geomagnetic and gravitational forces. Aeroecology has relied upon traditional ecological field studies such as direct observation or detection of organisms flying overhead (e.g., moon watching, thermal cameras, or bioacoustics). However, the field has been greatly advanced by the inclusion of remotely sensed data, in particular Doppler weather radar or NEXRAD. In March 2012, an international and interdisciplinary Radar Aeroecology Workshop was held at the National Weather Center on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, OK, USA. Experts in the fields of ecology and meteorology discussed how various radar technologies could be applied to aeroecological questions. Aeroecology research groups at both the University of Oklahoma and the University of Delaware continue to advance the development and integration of remotely sensed data to quantify, qualify, and track biological utilization of the lower aerosphere. Aeroecology is a relatively new field of study. It was first introduced as a concept by Boston University researcher Thomas Kunz et al. in a paper published in 2008, "Aeroecology: probing and modeling the aerosphere.