How much can we trust GPS wildlife tracking An assessment in semi-free-ranging Crested Ibis Nipponia
Time:2021-05-10Source: 原创 Hits:
Liu, D., Chen, L., Wang, Y., Lu, J. and Huang, S., 2018. How much can
we trust GPS wildlife tracking? An assessment in semi-free-ranging
Crested Ibis Nipponia nippon. PeerJ, 6, p.e5320. (朱鹮,HQBN2525, HQBN3527)
GPS tracking has been increasingly used for wildlife studies in recent
decades, but its performance has not been fully assessed, especially
for newly developed lightweight transmitters. We assessed the
performance of eight GPS transmitters developed in China by attaching
them to Crested Ibises Nipponia nippon confined to two acclimation cages
mimicking real habitats. We calculated the distance between GPS
locations and the centroid of the cages as the positioning error, and
used the 95% (95th percentile) positioning errors to define the
accuracy. The positioning success averaged92.0%, which is much higher
than that of previous studies. Locations were not evenly distributed by
Location Class (LC), with the LC A and B locations accounting for 88.7%.
The observed 95% positioning error in the locations of LC A (9–39 m)
and B (11–41 m) was quite accurate, while up to 6.9–8.8% of poor-quality
locations were detected in LC C and D with > 100 m or even >
1,000 m positioning error. Positioning success and accuracy were
different between the test sites, probably due to the difference in
vegetation structure. Thus, we argue that the tested transmitters could
provide a large proportion of high-quality data for fine-scale studies,
and a number of poor- quality locations that need attention. We suggest
that the HPOD (horizontal dilution of precision) or PDOP (positional
dilution of precision) be reported instead of the LC as a measurement of
location accuracy for each location to ensure identification and
filtering of implausible locations.