Blue Whale Home Ranges from Satellite Tracking off the U.S. West Coast, 1994-2008

Fifty-three blue whales were tracked with Argos satellite tags off the U.S. West Coast between 1994 and 2008. This repository contains shapefiles of their estimated home ranges, calculated using a kernel density estimator. The data was produced by Ladd M. Irvine and documented in a 2014 publication.

Use Cases

• Modeling critical habitat areas based on kernel density home range estimates.
• Analyzing spatial overlap with shipping lanes or fishing grounds based on the geospatial home ranges.
• Studying long-term movement patterns of a protected species based on the 14-year tracking period.

Strengths

• Contains home range estimates for 53 individual whales.
• Data spans 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.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Ladd M. Irvine

Collection Method

Argos satellite tracking data processed with an LSCV kernel density estimator.

Time Range

1994 to 2008

Geography

U.S. West Coast