Year-round estimates of penguin colony locations at the Atka Bay, Coulman Island, and Cape Washington colonies, 2017-2024

Shapefiles recording the location of groups of emperor penguins each year from 2017-2024, for three colonies; Atka Bay, Coulman Island, and Cape Washington. Manual year-round tracking of the Atka Bay, Coulman Island, and Cape Washington emperor penguin colonies was carried out 2017-2024. Location tracking was undertaken in Google Earth Engine using Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery during the winter (April-August) and using Landsat 8-9 and Sentinel-2 optical imagery during the summer (September-February). Winter location was estimated from the movement of relatively high backscatter pixels representing penguins on the fast ice, while summer location was inferred from the movement of guano staining. This research was undertaken in order to analyse the year-round movement and behaviour of emperor penguin colonies, and to assess the use of SAR for winter observations of colonies.

This work was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UK grant NE/Y00115X/1 awarded to SSRJ and PTF, and the Royal Society NZ Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and US Department of Defense grant (FA2386-24-1-4052) to ML.