Adelie Penguin GPS Tracking Data from Hop Island 2011-2012

GPS location data tracks Adelie penguins at Hop Island in the Rauer Group during the 2011/12 Antarctic field season. The dataset covers deployments made across the incubation, guard, and creche periods of the breeding cycle. Data collection was conducted by Nobuo Kokubun of Japan's National Institute of Polar Research with support from the Australian Antarctic Division under project 4087.

Use Cases

• Analyze foraging trip duration and distance traveled during the incubation, guard, and creche breeding stages.
• Model penguin movement paths and home ranges using GPS location coordinates and timestamps.
• Investigate spatial overlap and potential competition between individual penguins tracked concurrently.
• Correlate movement patterns from GPS data with environmental conditions like sea ice extent for the 2011/12 season.

Strengths

• Data collected under protocols approved by the Australian Antarctic Animal Ethics Committee, ensuring ethical standards.
• Temporal coverage spans multiple critical breeding phases: incubation, guard, and creche periods.

Limitations

• Sample size (number of individual penguins tracked) is not specified in the provided metadata.
• The dataset is from a single field season (2011/12) and a single location, limiting temporal and geographic generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AU_AADC), supported by Australian Antarctic Science project 4087.

Collection Method

GPS units were deployed on Adelie penguins, later retrieved, and the data downloaded.

Time Range

2011/12 Antarctic field season.

Freshness

Data reflects the 2011/12 field season, with a last update recorded in January 2012.

Geography

Hop Island, Rauer Group, Antarctica.