Mary-Anne Lea and her colleagues at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NOAA AFSC) are studying Northern fur seal populations - including pup overwinter behavior at the Pribilof Islands - in relationship to environmental conditions. Eonfusion enables the exploration of the winter migratory routes and dive behavior by individual or group (sex, site) from tagging studies. All tracks are quickly viewed in 3D-space and time in relation to environmental and bathymetric data.
Fig. 1 The extent of all tracks colored according to the Island on which the pups where born and tagged with satellite positioning sensors.
Fig. 2 The extent of all tracks colored according to the sex of the pup
Integration of data from multiple loggers/sensors - e.g. position & dive data
Seal behavior is explored by filtering tracks for individuals or groups and then color-coding tracks to show variation in behaviors such as speed. New attributes are calculated based on existing data and additional environmental data sets can be easily fused to the track data to provide even greater scope for analysis. This application of data fusion allows dive profile summary information (depth bin histogram data) to be merged to the track positional attributes, allowing for the concurrent visualization of horizontal and vertical movement patterns.
Fig. 3 Dive summary data along a track using halos to show the relative amount of time spent at a series of depth intervals
Integration of data from other observation platforms - field, satellite or model data
Environmental variables from satellites, models and other sources are integrated with track data to explore relationships between animal movement patterns and physical features of the environment. For example, a time series of satellite data (e.g. Sea Surface Temperature - SST) and track data are visualized concurrently, and attributes from the imagery data along the track route are integrated with track attributes via fusion. Unlike traditional methods which require specialized coding and processing or even the use of multiple software packages, data integration in Eonfusion is a simple procedure.
Fig. 4 SST data from the satellite imagery time series is migrated to the seal tracks; this can be graphed and linked to the time slider, allowing updating of the graph as one navigates through time in the main scene.
Fig. 5 Events, such as the departure of seal pups from their islands of birth, can be observed in relation to satellite scatterometer wind field data. Filtered to identify storm centers (defined here as speeds > 30 knots), powerful manipulation and observation of data can be made while interactively navigating through space and time.
Fig. 6 Seal pup behavior can be quickly observed in relation to ocean eddy core data
Save time with data integration and analysis tasks and share methods and meta-data
The development of applications in Eonfusion is achieved simply and interactively in the data flow environment. Data flows define logical relationships between data objects and the flow and transformation of the data along a user-defined data processing chain from input to scene visualization or output. Eonfusion's data flow methods with user defined operators and scene definitions can be shared amongst colleagues as XML files and are readily re-usable. Otherwise complex workflows and operations are made simple and elegant via such tools that more effectively leverage Eonfusion's powerful data integration and analysis capabilities.
Fig. 7 Data flow operators are intuitively linked in a graphical interface to develop methods accessing sophisticated data integration capabilities. A time series of satellite (raster) data files is integrated with track (vector) data using Eonfusion's graphical data flow methods. Five operators achieve this integration of satellite SST time series with track data, and the SST attributes then become available with pre-existing track attributes for further computation and analysis.
Acknowledgements: Mary-Anne Lea and Tom Gelatt, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, NOAA-AFSC, Seattle, WA, USA.
