Repository for the eponymous paper published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
See this website for a knitted bookdown version of all RMarkdown analysis notebooks used in this study.
Fireworks are important elements of celebrations globally, but little is known about their effects on wildlife. The synchronized and extraordinary use of fireworks on New Year’s Eve triggers strong flight responses in birds. We used weather radar and systematic bird counts to quantify how flight responses differed across habitats and corresponding bird communities, and determined the distance-dependence of this relationship. On average, approximately 1000 times as many birds were in flight on New Year’s Eve than on other nights. We found that fireworks-related disturbance decreased with distance, most strongly in the first five kilometers, but overall flight activity remained elevated tenfold at distances up to about 10 km. Communities of large-bodied species displayed a stronger response than communities of small-bodied species. Given the pervasive nature of this disturbance, the establishment of large fireworks-free zones or centralizing fireworks within urban centers could help to mitigate their effects on birds. Conservation action should prioritize avian communities with the most disturbance-prone, large-bodied bird species.
Bart Hoekstra1, Willem Bouten1, Adriaan Dokter1,2, Hans van Gasteren1,3, Chris van Turnhout4,5, Bart Kranstauber1, Emiel van Loon1, Hidde Leijnse6,7, Judy Shamoun-Baranes1
1 Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 94240, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2 Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd, Ithaca, NY 14850, United States of America
3 Royal Netherlands Air Force, P.O Box 8762, 4820 BB Breda, The Netherlands
4 Sovon Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology, P.O. Box 6521, 6503 GA Nijmegen, The Netherlands
5 Department of Animal Ecology & Physiology, Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences (RIBES), Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
6 R&D Observations and Data Technology, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, The Netherlands
7 Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands
The animation above (click to see full version) of radar measurements from two Dutch weather radars shows the mass take-off of birds following the lighting of fireworks just after midnight on January 1st, 2018. In the study area (surrounded by the red arcs), no less than 384,000 birds immediately flee from fireworks.
This repository contains all necessary raw bird count data from Sovon. Other data should be downloaded separately using the instructions below. The analysis notebooks clearly show how files should be structured for the analysis and the folder structure has been retained by adding empty .gitkeep files to this repository.
Weather radar data can be acquired through the KNMI Data Platform. All files used in our analysis are listed in .txt files in folders in data/raw/pvol/ and should be stored in their respective folders to run the scripts. Filenames in the .txt files are unique identifiers and can be used to directly query the KNMI API. See here for Herwijnen and Den Helder radar data respectively.
Land use data can be acquired via the Copernicus portal for the CORINE Land Cover 2018 dataset. Contents of the CLC2018 archive should be extracted into the data/raw/landuse/clc2018_clc2018_v2018_20_raster100m/ folder.
Life-history characteristics for birds can be downloaded from Storchová & Hořák 2018 and should be extracted directly into the data/raw/life-history-characteristics/ folder.
We have tested several proxies for disturbance caused by fireworks, including human population density. This data can be acquired from Statistics Netherlands (direct link to file) and should be extracted in data/raw/population-density/.
To filter out last remaining effects of sea clutter, we use the detailed land map of Statistics Netherlands (direct link to file), which should be extracted in data/raw/municipalities/ or can be loaded via WFS as described in the respective code.