Read the seventh MARCIS Newsletter for project progress and highlights.
Dear reader,
We have some good news and couldn’t wait to share it until the next planned newsletter: The Norwegian Research Council has permitted MARCIS an extension to complete the project by the end of 2025 instead of by September! This enables us to make some improvements to the App and have more time to test it out with our project partners. This extension also comes with further adjustments in our timeline which we felt would be good to share with you now.
First, we aim to have the final project meeting in early November. Here, we want to present some concrete cases in which potential users can use the MARCIS App and give everyone the opportunity to use it for themselves. The official launch of the app is planned for early December.
Before all of this happens, we will continue with our Lunch & Learn seminar series. One of the L&L seminars will be an extended webinar about the app itself. We plan for this extended L&L to be at some stage in September, and hope that partners will use that opportunity to see the app’s progress and provide feedback on user-friendliness. You can also look forward to other Lunch & Learn contributions from the different work packages, and hopefully also from MARCIS project partners. More information about the L&L seminars will be sent out soon.
In other news, and just in time for Spring migration, we have begun radar data collection at Valsneset, a coastal wind farm in Trøndelag, using a 3D avian radar system. The data we collect here over the next few months will be used to test and further develop the machine learning models being built in Work Package 2 to identify bird species and groups based on their flight track characteristics. We will also gain useful data and insights on bird movements within and around the wind farm – attraction to or avoidance of turbines, flight heights etc. This site was specifically chosen due to its proximity to the marine environment. Many marine birds, such as herring gulls and great black-backed gulls, use the wind farm area daily. Other coastal species, including geese and eiders, pass over or near to the wind farm on migration.
Radar data was also successfully collected from the Hywind Tampen floating offshore wind farm in February and March of this year. These data will be used to test the machine learning models and analyse bird movements around the turbine where the radar was placed.
As always, please do get in touch with us if you have any feedback for us, or requests for presentations or discussion topics at a Lunch & Learn!
Best wishes,
Tone Kristin Reiertsen (MARCIS project leader)
Feel free to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and ResearchGate! The MARCIS logo and project flyer can be used at conferences and meetings where the project and its results are being presented. You will also find a Q&A and a glossary on the MARCIS website which provides answers to questions asked in the MARCIS Lunch and learn seminar series, and definitions to some commonly used terms in the project.