Using Machine Learning to Forecast Bird Migration

PhD student Mikko Jimenez and his colleagues are using machine learning to improve our ability to forecast bird migration. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that can find patterns in huge amounts of data much faster than a person can, and then use those patterns to make predictions. Still, Mikko says it’s not as simple as computers to the rescue.

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Using Machine Learning to Forecast Bird Migration

Written by Conor Gearin

This is BirdNote.

[Snow Geese flying overhead]

Scientists can now forecast bird migration based on weather and how it affects bird flight. But weather isn’t the whole story – habitats on the ground also influence the birds’ journeys, says PhD student Mikko Jimenez.

Mikko Jimenez: If there's forest cover or if there's a city, that's gonna really impact where birds are taking off from, where they're flying, where they're gonna land, where they're gonna stop over.

Mikko and his colleagues are working to add all kinds of landscape features into the migration forecast model to improve it. And they’re using machine learning to tie together all these different types of info. A type of artificial intelligence, machine learning can find patterns in huge amounts of data much faster than a person can, and then use those patterns to make predictions. Still, Mikko says it’s not as simple as computers to the rescue.

Mikko Jimenez: I think it's really important to make this point that machine learning is making these huge advancements, but there's also people that are behind all of those really important milestones that we've hit.

What machine learning offers, he says, is the chance to solve complex problems that until recently were just out of reach.

Mikko Jimenez: It feels like everyone's kind of working on this huge jigsaw puzzle in their own section, and we're at that point where we're starting to put these big sections together and figure out this bigger picture.

[Franklin’s Gull flock calls]

Learn more about migration forecasting tools on our website, BirdNote dot org. I’m Ariana Remmel.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Snow Goose ML139672461 recorded by Paul Marvin, and Franklin’s Gull ML59238 recorded by William W. H. Gunn.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote November 2023
Narrator: Ariana Remmel

ID# jimenezm-02-2023-11-06 jimenezm-02