Integrated vertical profiles for 16 coastal NEXRAD weather surveillance radars from 2014 to 2023

This dataset quantifies offshore and adjacent terrestrial migration of landbirds along the western North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts from 2014–2023. Offshore flights of migratory landbirds are common but difficult to quantify due to lack of offshore monitoring. Offshore wind development is expanding rapidly and may overlap with migration corridors. Understanding the timing, locations, and numbers of offshore birds can identify high-risk periods and areas for collision mitigation. We used 16 coastal weather surveillance radars in the western North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to evaluate differences in passage, altitude, and timing of migration between adjacent terrestrial and offshore habitats for spring and fall from 2014 to 2023. We used machine learning methods to predict unobserved low altitude densities that the radar beam overshoots at increasing distances from the radar. Migration traffic varied geographically and seasonally, with offshore migration traffic being lower..., This data is vertically integrated vertical profiles of 16 coastal NEXRAD stations, which was filtered to isolate biological activity while filtering out precipitation and sea clutter noise. To compile this dataset, we analyzed bird migration data from 16 coastal WSR-88D (NEXRAD) radar stations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S. between 2014 and 2023 between the spring (Mar 1–Jun 15) and fall (Aug 1–Nov 15) migration seasons. We downloaded Level II polar volume data at 30-minute intervals between civil sunset and sunrise for each radar from the NEXRAD archives (Original polar volume files are from the NEXRAD Level II archive data which are openly available from the Registry of Open Data on AWS Data Exchange (https://registry.opendata.aws/noaanexrad).

Using the R packages bioRad and vol2birdR, we derived vertical profiles of bird density from reflectivity data, excluding precipitation via a correlation threshold (ρHV > 0.95). Each radar scan was partitioned into terrestri..., # Integrated vertical profiles for 16 coastal NEXRAD weather surveillance radars from 2014 to 2023

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.zcrjdfnrr](10.5061/dryad.zcrjdfnrr)

#### Description of the data and file structure

#### Reproducibility

Radar_analysis.Rmd is the attached code which reproduces the analysis from the file: Integrated_radar_profiles.csv, which is the only input file required to knit the analysis and reproduce the analysis in the manuscript.

### File locations & working directory

The Rmd is set up to use **relative paths**, so you don’t have to call `setwd()`.

* Place `Radar_analysis.Rmd` and `Integrated_radar_profiles.csv` in the **same folder** (or put the CSV in a `data/` subfolder)
* The Rmd reads the CSV via a path constructed with `here::here()`

### Files and variables

#### File: Integrated_radar_profiles.csv

##### Variables

The file: Integrated_radar_profiles.csv contains the following columns:

* radar: 4 letter abbreviation of each radar station
* datetime: PO...,