How much can we trust GPS wildlife tracking? An assessment in semi-free-ranging Crested Ibis Nipponia nippon

PeerJ

article

Dongping Liu¹  Lixia Chen¹  Yihua Wang¹  Jun Lu¹  Songlin Huang¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Forest Protection of State Forestry Administration, Research Institute of Forest Ecology and Environment Protection

关键词: GPS tracking;    HDOP;    Crested ibis;    Location accuracy;    PDOP;    Positioning error;    Acclimation;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.5320

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

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 nippon1, 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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY