GPS data acquisition system

对野生动物的研究在很大程度上依赖于有关资源和生物本身的空间信息。全球定位系统（GPS）的出现彻底改变了生态学，特别是景观和动物生态学。在过去的12年里，我的所有研究项目都是在实地进行的，并且在很大程度上依赖于高质量的GPS定位信息。所要求的四个全球定位系统接收器将取代旧的全球定位系统装置（特林布尔Geoexplorer II），这些装置已变得不可靠，维修费用也很高，全球定位系统将继续在我即将进行的关于北方森林鸟类和哺乳动物生境选择的研究中发挥核心作用。事实上，如果没有GPS，我的大部分实地研究将变得非常繁重或不可能进行。我的研究使用每天获得的动物分布模式（点）和运动模式（线）来确定景观属性的影响（例如，森林边缘接近度，森林斑块隔离度）和生态关系（例如，同种吸引、捕食）对鸟类和哺乳动物的景观利用、运动行为和繁殖性能的影响。与用于娱乐用途的低端GPS不同，所要求的专业GPS装置不仅可以采集高精度的位置数据，还可以采集相关的特征，如物种名称、个体ID、行为信息等。由于每天记录数百个位置，这种数据采集能力至关重要;我们不能使用野外笔记本作为能够记录数据的专业GPS的替代品。

The study of wildlife relies heavily on spatial information about resources and the organisms themselves. The advent of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) has revolutionized Ecology, and in particular, Landscape and Animal Ecology. All my research projects in the past 12 years have been conducted in the field and have relied heavily on high-quality GPS positional information. The four GPS receivers requested will replace the old GPS units (Trimble Geoexplorer II) which have become unreliable and expensive to service.GPS will continue to play a central role in my upcoming research on habitat selection by boreal forest birds and mammals. In fact, without GPS, most of my field research would become very onerous or impossible to conduct. My research uses animal distribution patterns (points) and movement patterns (lines) obtained on a daily basis to determine the influence of landscape attributes (e.g., forest edge proximity, forest patch isolation) and ecological relationships (e.g., conspecific attraction, predation) on landscape use, movement behavior and reproductive performance by birds and mammals. The professional GPS units requested, unlike low-end GPS meant for recreational use, will allow not only the acquisition of high precision location data, but also associated features such as species name, individual ID, behavioral information, etc. With hundreds of locations recorded each day, such data acquisition capability is crucial; we cannot use field notebooks as a substitute for professional GPS capable of data logging.