MoveBank Track Annotation Project : Linking Animal Movement Data with the Environment to Discover the Impact of Environmental Change in Animal Migration

The behavior of animals is very much influenced by their surrounding environment. With the advances in positioning and sensor technologies, it is now possible to capture data of animal locations as well as their surrounding environmental information, at previously unseen spatial and temporal granularities. As a consequence, research interest in developing computational methods for the analysis of movement has increased significantly over the past few years. Yet, the link between movement data and the environmental variables has been largely ignored in existing exploratory tools, as well as in previous studies of movement behavior of animals. The MoveBank environmental data annotation project expands an open portal of animal tracking data and enriches it with automated access to environmental variables, as well as effective computational methods to study and process movement and environment data. The aim is to facilitate the investigation and develop a new understanding of spatiotemporal patterns of animal movement in response to a changing environment. The outcomes will contribute to a better modeling, understanding, and ultimately prediction of the behavioral changes of animals in response to global change.