Blue Whale Home Ranges from Satellite Tracking, 1994-2008

53 blue whales were tracked with Argos satellite tags off the U.S. West Coast between 1994 and 2008. The data contains shapefiles of home ranges calculated with an LSCV kernel density estimator for tracks at least 30 days in duration. This dataset was created by Ladd M. Irvine and is associated with a 2014 publication.

Use Cases

• Modeling critical habitat for blue whales based on home range shapefiles.
• Analyzing spatial overlap with shipping lanes or fishing grounds based on the geospatial tracking data.
• Studying long-term movement patterns of a protected species based on the 14-year tracking period.

Strengths

• Home ranges are derived from tracking data for 53 individual whales.
• Data covers a 14-year period from 1994 to 2008.
• Home ranges were calculated using a documented LSCV kernel density estimator method.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset contains processed home ranges, not the raw tracking points, limiting some analyses.

Provenance

Source

Ladd M. Irvine

Collection Method

Home ranges estimated from Argos satellite tag tracking data using an LSCV kernel density estimator.

Time Range

1994 to 2008

Geography

U.S. West Coast