Aerial Photographs of Common Murre Restoration Project 2005

NODC Accession 0057025 contains a digital collection of aerial photographs documenting the Common Murre Restoration Project in central California. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created these images by scanning 35mm color slides taken during 2005 aerial surveys of Devil's Slide Rock to monitor seabird colony restoration efforts. This dataset provides a visual baseline for assessing the project's efficacy in reestablishing a colony that once held nearly 3,000 common murres.

Use Cases

• Assessing colony reestablishment by analyzing bird counts and distribution in the aerial photographs.
• Monitoring changes in seabird populations at Devil's Slide Rock over time using the 2005 baseline imagery.
• Supporting habitat restoration research by documenting the physical and ecological state of the seastack in 2005.
• Providing visual evidence for evaluating the success of human-led wildlife restoration initiatives.

Strengths

• Provides a specific visual baseline from 2005 for a restoration project targeting a colony that historically held close to 3,000 birds.
• Images were created from archival 35mm slides using a standardized NOAA-funded scanning process, ensuring preservation.
• Cross-platform presence on Data.gov and NASA EarthData indicates recognized importance for ecological and climate research.

Limitations

• The dataset scope is limited to imagery from a single year (2005), lacking a continuous time series for trend analysis.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with Data.gov showing a future date (2026) and NASA EarthData showing 2005, creating uncertainty about metadata maintenance.
• No columnar or structured tabular data is provided, limiting quantitative analysis without manual image interpretation.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex, archived by NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC Accession 0057025).

Collection Method

Aerial surveys photographed 35mm color slides, which were later scanned to create archival TIFF and web-access JPEG images as part of a NOAA Climate Database Modernization Program task.

Time Range

2005

Freshness

2005-06-15 00:00:00

Geography

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