The grant could provide up to $215,000.
US Geological Survey's (USGS) Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU Partner for research to develop hardware- and software-based methods for mitigating sea clutter in biological radar systems deployed in offshore environments. Buoy-deployable biological radar systems are being developed to study offshore airspace use by birds and bats in support of sustainable offshore wind energy development. The proximity of these buoys to the sea surface and the nearly continuous motion introduce dynamic noise into radar data streams that interferes with the detection and monitoring of birds and bats. Antenna hardware and adaptive software algorithms must be developed to suppress dynamic noise caused by the sea surface in order to detect and quantify vertebrates use of the airspace.