Integration of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System to the NOAA GOES Data Collection System for Offshore Wildlife Telemetry Applications

The development of offshore wind energy facilities has created a renewed demand for monitoring of migratory species which may be influenced by the presence of these installations along their migration routes. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), in coordination with Birds Canada and other proj ect collaborators has proposed the use of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System for monitoring migratory bird and bat presence and movement in proximity to offshore wind energy facilities. Motus is a radio frequency (RF) based tag/receiver system that detects RF tagged individuals traveling in proximity to a Motus receiver station, logs their unique identification, and relays it back to a centralized Motus database maintained by Birds Canada. The location of offshore wind energy facilities far from traditional terrestrial networks drives a demand for satellite connectivity for the receiver stations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) host an environmental radio relay system, the GOES Data Collection System (DCS) which connects remote in-situ environmental monitoring platforms, also known as Data Collection Platforms (DCPs) with researchers throughout the western hemisphere. This relay service is free to use for U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies, in addition to international government agencies and research organizations with a U.S. government sponsor. By integrating Motus receivers with GOES DCS transmitters, near real-time migratory species telemetry data can be relayed from remote locations, such as offshore wind energy facilities, and delivered to the Motus database. This integration enables a larger distribution of Motus receiver stations both offshore and terrestrially by providing a reliable, service fee free link that can deployed anywhere within the footprint of the GOES spacecraft and follow-on NOAA geostationary satellite constellations. NOAA is also performing testing to validate the use of the latest GOES DCS transmitters and communications protocols in dynamic offshore settings, for use on buoys and ocean floats, with Motus receivers as a payload or other environmental in-situ sensors. While GOES DCS was used on buoys in the past, notably by the NOAA National Data Buoy Center, power requirements and performance limited its adoption. NOAA is revalidating DCS use on buoys and floats by benchmarking existing transmitter performance in dynamic sea surface conditions and evaluating performance of enhanced forward error correction and modulation schemes that will enable DCS operation in signal to noise ratio challenged environments.