UPskilling and upscaling Brazilian weather Radar for the study of Aerial INsects

自然环境的变化正在使我们赖以生存的动植物发生巨大变化。然而，监测生物多样性的传统方法只能提供有限的变化率和变化的驱动因素。首先，我们目前了解自然世界的方式受到无法定期调查的阻碍，无法量化生物体的数量（丰度）或数量（生物量），以及无法用一致的方法在大面积上同时进行调查。结果是，当我们凭直觉认识到存在严重的环境问题时，科学家们甚至仍在努力证明这些问题的存在。我们基于雷达的生物多样性监测方法是一个潜在的解决方案，需要一个生物监测尺度。几十年来，雷达网络一直在世界各地用于天气监测和预报，并提供有关大气中物体（通常是雨雪）的高分辨率信息。然而，我们已经证明，天气雷达也可以提供有关空气中存在多少动物的有用信息，我们的项目团队正在将我们的新技术应用于这个专注于巴西研究重点的项目。我们的项目有三个主要的研究目标，其中每一个都构成了一个新的尝试，在回答一个老问题在巴西的环境。首先，我们将应用我们的方法来跟踪关键作物害虫，因为它们进出农业景观。我们拥有互补的雷达技术-第一个是我们工作的重点-气象雷达网络，第二个是一家巴西公司制造的一种新型雷达设备，可以进行局部扫描（在一片田地内）。第二个研究目的是测试农药施用模式是否影响我们对昆虫的检测。在过去十年中，巴西化学农药的多样性和丰富性大幅增加，对生物多样性的影响基本上是未知的。最后，我们将使用一种旧形式的天气雷达扫描巴西亚马逊地区，以探索是否有可能提取有关雨林昆虫种群状况的有意义的生物信息。雨林分析是高风险的，因为由于雷达的年龄，它可能不会产生有意义的数据。然而，如果数据中有有用的信息，那么我们的方法可以解锁亚马逊生物多样性记录的庞大数据集。该项目的最后一部分侧重于我们团队的巴西和英国部分之间更广泛的合作。这两个小组之间的最初接触是因为需要交流雷达航空生态学方面的想法和专门知识。为了帮助满足这一需求，并建立两个研究群体之间的工作方式，我们将创建一个在线培训课程，向生态学家教授雷达科学基础知识，向雷达科学家教授生态学，使雷达航空生态学领域随着它的发展而更容易获得。关键项目产出将是一份合作论文，探讨雷达生物监测在巴西环境中的应用，空气生态学方法的培训课程，以及一篇或多篇描述我们将进行的农业害虫、杀虫剂和雨林分析的初步雷达分析的论文。我们计划建立我们的网络，向其他国家提供基于雷达的监测，这种新的合作将是实现这一更广泛目标的重要基石。

Changes in the natural environment are creating large shifts in the animals and plants on which we rely. However, conventional approaches to the monitoring of biodiversity have only provided limited insights into the rate of change and the drivers of that change. Primarily, our current ways of learning about the natural world are held back by an inability to survey regularly, an inability to quantify the number (abundance) or amount (biomass) of organisms, and an inability to survey simultaneously across large areas with consistent methods. The result is that, at a time when we recognise intuitively that there are serious environmental problems, scientists are still struggling even to demonstrate conclusively that those problems exist. Our radar-based biodiversity monitoring approach represents a potential solution to this need for a biological monitoring yardstick. Radar networks have been in place for weather monitoring and forecasting for decades around the world and give high-resolution information about objects (usually rain and snow) in the atmosphere. However, we have demonstrated that weather radars also give useful information about how many animals are present in the air and our project team is applying our novel techniques in this project focused on Brazilian research priorities. Our project has three main research aims, each of which constitutes a novel attempt at answering an old question within the Brazilian environment. First, we will apply our methods to track key crop pests as they move in and out of agricultural landscapes. We have at our disposal to complementary radar technologies - the first the weather radar networks on which our work has been focused and the second a novel radar device created by a Brazilian company that allows local scanning (within a field). The second research aim is to test whether patterns of pesticide application influence our detection of insects. Brazil has experienced a substantial increase in the diversity and abundance of chemical pesticides in the past decade, with largely unknown consequences for biodiversity. Finally, we will use an older form of weather radar that is scanning across the Amazon region of Brazil to explore whether it is possible to extract meaningful biological information about the state of rainforest insect populations. The rainforest analysis is high risk as it may not yield meaningful data due to the age of the radars. However, if there is useful information in the data then our methods could unlock a vast dataset of records of Amazonian biodiversity.The final part of the project focuses on the broader collaboration between the Brazilian and UK parts of our team. The initial contact between the groups was brought about because of a need to exchange ideas and expertise in radar aeroecology. To help meet this need and to establish a way of working between the two communities of researchers, we will create an online training course that will teach the basics of radar science to the ecologists and ecology to the radar scientists such that the field of radar aeroecology is more accessible as it develops.The key project outputs will be a collaborative paper exploring the application of radar biomonitoring to the Brazilian environment, the training course on aeroecological methods, and one or more papers describing the preliminary radar analysis of the agricultural pest, pesticide, and rainforest analysis that we will undertake. We have plans to build our network to deliver radar-based monitoring to other countries and this new collaboration will be an important cornerstone of that wider goal.