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(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

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intended to demonstrate these systems can also track birds <strong>and</strong> other targets beyond the perimeter<br />

of those facilities.<br />

Methods<br />

We chose MCASCP for the demonstration of PA5.1 for much the same reason as we chose it for<br />

PA4.1 (Section 6.1.1.4) – it’s the largest of the military airfields used in the <strong>IVAR</strong> studies, <strong>and</strong><br />

one of the largest in the world.<br />

We began by outlining the perimeter of the MCASCP facility using the Alarms function of the<br />

TVW application. Within this perimeter, we masked the central 1 km radius to reduce the<br />

returns from ground vehicles <strong>and</strong> other targets close to the radar.<br />

The data we chose for this demonstration were collected during the fall 2008 visual confirmation<br />

study at MCASCP; specifically, they were collected on 6 October 2008, between 15:18 to 17:30<br />

GMT (08:18 to 10:30 EDT) – see Section 6.1.1.1.1. We played back the dataset for this date/ time<br />

through the TVW software, with the TVW configured to display the targets’ Track ID number,<br />

<strong>and</strong> generated screen captures of the display to illustrate birds well beyond the perimeter of the<br />

airfield.<br />

Results<br />

Figure 6-33 through Figure 6-35 present three examples of birds tracked by the radar beyond<br />

the perimeter of the MCASCP airfield (green line in each figure). Given the irregular shape of<br />

the MCASCP facility, <strong>and</strong> the location of the eBirdRad radar within the facility, some targets<br />

that are outside the perimeter are less than 2 km from the radar. However, the targets that we<br />

selected to demonstrate this criterion are all 5-6 km from the radar. These targets would have<br />

been outside the perimeter of all but the far northwest portion of the MCASCP facility.<br />

While no birds were tracked beyond the far northwestern corner of the MCASCP facility in the<br />

dataset we selected for this demonstration, Performance Criterion SB3.1 (Section 6.2.1.3) will<br />

demonstrate the ability of the eBirdRad radar to track birds out to ranges of 11 km or more - well<br />

beyond the perimeter of most military airfields.<br />

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