Aerial Photographs for Common Murre Colony Restoration in California

Central California's Devil's Slide Rock seabird colony is documented in this digital collection of scanned aerial photographs from 1996. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex created the images to establish a baseline for the Common Murre Restoration Project. This dataset contains archival TIFF and web-access JPEG images from a NOAA Climate Database Modernization Program task.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seabird colony size and composition on Devil's Slide Rock using visual counts from aerial photographs.
• Establishing a pre-restoration baseline for common murre (Uria aalge) populations in central California.
• Monitoring changes in seabird habitat and nesting site usage over time by comparing with later surveys.
• Supporting research on the impact of human-caused mortality and subsequent restoration efforts on a keystone species.

Strengths

• Provides a specific visual baseline from 1996 for a colony that historically held nearly 3,000 murres.
• Images were created as part of a formal NOAA modernization program, ensuring archival (TIFF) and access (JPEG) versions.
• Aerial survey methodology provides a standardized, repeatable observation method for colony assessment.

Limitations

• The dataset consists solely of images from a single year (1996), limiting temporal analysis.
• Core metadata such as column names, row counts, and precise image quantity are unavailable across all platforms.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (1996-06-11 and 2026-04-01) create uncertainty about dataset currency.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex, processed by NOAA NCEI.

Collection Method

Aerial photographic surveys scanned to digital format under NOAA's California Coastal Marine Ecosystem Surveys project.

Time Range

1996

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:20:25.790161

Geography

Devil's Slide Rock, San Mateo coast near Pacifica, central California, USA.