http://www.rhci-online.net/radiogram/radiogram.htm

  https://github.com/GyanD/codexffmpeg/releases/tag/2023-03-05-git-912ac82a3c

RSID: <<2023-10-12T23:31Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>


Welcome to program 326 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

  1:39 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
  2:48 MFSK32: Salmon are spawning in Arctic rivers*
  9:02 MFSK64: Space weather disrupts nocturnal bird migration
14:15 MFSK64: This week's images*
27:29 MFSK32: Closing announcements

* with image(s)


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From Phys.org:

Salmon are spawning in Arctic rivers, researchers confirm

by University of Alaska Fairbanks
October 5, 2023

Researchers have confirmed that salmon are spawning in an Arctic
Ocean watershed, suggesting that at least some salmon species
could be expanding to new territory as climate change reshapes
their habitat.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led project found about 100
chum salmon in the Anaktuvuk and Itkillik rivers on Alaska's
North Slope. Both rivers flow into the Colville River, which
empties into the Arctic Ocean. All the fish that researchers
caught in mid-September 2023 were either actively spawning or had
finished spawning at sites where groundwater appeared to be
flowing to the surface. Similar conditions have supported chum
salmon reproduction throughout their typical range.

UAF researcher Peter Westley, who led the project, said the
discovery of these fish aligns with a hypothesis that salmon are
being pushed north as their traditional habitat changes. Many
established salmon populations, such as those in California, are
declining due to climate change. In the Arctic, climate change
might be an ally to salmon.

"Throughout most parts of the salmon's range, things have gotten
too warm and they're starting to blink off," said Westley, an
associate professor at UAF's College of Fisheries and Ocean
Sciences. "In the Arctic, the water is getting warm enough and
they're starting to blink on."

Westley, who has studied potential shifts in salmon habitat for
the past decade, credited a December 2022 workshop for shaping
the goals of this research. Scientists, community members and
Indigenous fishermen met in Anchorage to discuss the increasing
number of salmon being observed in the Arctic Ocean and their
possible origin.

The workshop helped steer researchers toward the Colville River
watershed, approximately 60 miles southwest of Prudhoe Bay.

"One major theme was that salmon have always been on the North
Slope, but they're also increasing in recent years," said
Elizabeth Mik'aq Lindley, a UAF graduate student who helped
organize the meeting. "I don't want to portray our discovery as
the first ever. That assumes no one has ever seen this before,
and people have been there for thousands of years."



Alaska is notable for the important connection that many people
have with salmon as a dietary staple and influence on the
ecosystem. Much of the Arctic has been an exception because it
has lacked salmon habitat, Westley said, but that could be
changing.

"You're seeing a place where these relationships might be
starting," he said.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-salmon-spawning-arctic-rivers.html

 

Image: Peter Westley holds a spawning male chum salmon alongside
the Anaktuvuk River. ...

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Shortwave Radiogram now changes to MFSK64 ...

 

RSID: <<2023-10-12T23:39Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>

 

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

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From Phys.org:

Space weather disrupts nocturnal bird migration, study finds

by University of Michigan
October 9, 2023

It's well-known that birds and other animals rely on Earth's
magnetic field for long-distance navigation during seasonal
migrations.

But how do periodic disruptions of the planet's magnetic field,
caused by solar flares and other energetic outbursts, affect the
reliability of those biological navigation systems?

University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues used
massive, long-term datasets from networks of U.S. Doppler weather
radar stations and ground-based magnetometers—devices that
measure the intensity of local magnetic fields—to test for a
possible link between geomagnetic disturbances and disruptions to
nocturnal bird migration.

They found a 9–17% reduction in the number of migrating birds, in
both spring and fall, during severe space weather events. And the
birds that chose to migrate during such events seemed to
experience more difficulty navigating, especially under overcast
conditions in autumn.

The new findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, provide correlational evidence for previously
unknown relationships between nocturnal bird migration dynamics
and geomagnetic disturbances, according to the researchers.

"Our findings highlight how animal decisions are dependent on
environmental conditions—including those that we as humans cannot
perceive, such as geomagnetic disturbances—and that these
behaviors influence population-level patterns of animal
movement," said study lead author Eric Gulson-Castillo, a
doctoral student in the U-M Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology.

Earth's magnetic field is regularly impacted by solar outbursts
that can trigger colorful auroras and that sometimes disrupt
satellite communications, human navigation systems and power
grids.

But little is known about how those disturbances affect animals
that depend on Earth's magnetic field for migratory orientation
and navigation. Previous experimental studies over several
decades provide strong evidence that birds, sea turtles and other
organisms key into small changes in magnetic inclination,
intensity and declination when making orientation decisions and
developing navigational maps.

One recent study examined millions of bird banding records and
found that geomagnetic disturbances were associated with
increased incidence of migratory bird "vagrancy," that is, birds
becoming lost during migration.

But most previous studies were narrowly focused in geographic
extent, duration and the number of species examined. The newly
published study, in contrast, uses a 23-year dataset of bird
migration across the U.S. Great Plains to provide new insights at
population and landscape levels.

The researchers used images collected at 37 NEXRAD radar stations
in the central flyway of the U.S. Great Plains, a major migratory
corridor. The flyway spans more than 1,000 miles in the U.S.,
from Texas to North Dakota.

The research team selected this relatively flat region to
minimize influences from mountainous topography or oceanic and
Great Lakes coastlines. Their final datasets included 1.7 million
radar scans from the fall and 1.4 million from the spring.

The community of nocturnally migrating birds in this region is
primarily composed of a diverse set of perching birds
(Passeriformes, 73% of species) such as thrushes and warblers;
shorebirds (Charadriiformes, 12%) such as sandpipers and plovers;
and waterfowl (Anseriformes, 9%) such as ducks, geese and swans.

The NEXRAD radar scans detect groups of hundreds to thousands of
migrating birds. Migration intensity—meaning the number of birds
in each cluster—can be estimated and direction of flight can be
measured.

Concurrent geomagnetic measurements were accessed through
superMAG, a worldwide collection of geomagnetic ground stations.
Data were collected from magnetometer stations near weather radar
sites.

The researchers matched data from each radar station with a
customized, spatiotemporally explicit index of geomagnetic
disturbance that represents the maximum hourly change from
background magnetic conditions.

U-M space scientist Daniel Welling and former University of Texas
at Arlington undergraduate Michelle Bui compiled the space
weather data and designed the geomagnetic disturbance index.
Welling and Bui are co-authors of the new study.

"The biggest challenge was trying to distill such a large
dataset—years and years of ground magnetic field
observations—into a geomagnetic disturbance index for each radar
site," said Welling, assistant professor in the Department of
Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the U-M College of
Engineering. "There was a lot of heavy lifting in terms of
assessing data quality and validating our final data product to
ensure that it was appropriate for this study."

The data trove was fed into two complementary statistical models
to measure the putative effects of magnetic disturbances on bird
migration. The models controlled for the known effects of
weather, temporal variables such as time of night and geographic
variables such as longitude and latitude.

"We found broad support that migration intensity decreases under
high geomagnetic disturbance," said study senior author Ben
Winger, assistant professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology and a curator of birds at the U-M Museum of
Zoology.

"Our results provide ecological context for decades of research
on the mechanisms of animal magnetoreception by demonstrating
community-wide impacts of space weather on migration dynamics."

The researchers also found that migrating birds appear to drift
with the wind more frequently during geomagnetic disturbances in
the fall, instead of expending great effort to battle crosswinds.

"Effort flying" against the wind was reduced by 25% under cloudy
skies during strong solar storms in the fall, suggesting that a
combination of obscured celestial cues and magnetic disruption
may hinder navigation.

"Our results suggest that fewer birds migrate during strong
geomagnetic disturbances and that migrating birds may experience
more difficulty navigating, especially under overcast conditions
in autumn," said Gulson-Castillo, who conducted the study as part
of his doctoral dissertation. "As a result, they may spend less
effort actively navigating in flight and consequently fly in
greater alignment with the wind."

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-space-weather-disrupts-nocturnal-bird.html
 

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net
 

This week's images ...

A fisherman casts his net in Dal Lake during sunset in Srinagar,
Jammu and Kashmir, September 28. https://tinyurl.com/ym3f2slx ...

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A carved pumpkin. https://tinyurl.com/ykn3t763 ...

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Puree from the pulp (seeds separated) of the previous pumpkin,
used to make pumpkin bread. https://tinyurl.com/ykn3t763 ...

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Autumn colors at Takaoka Kojo Park in Toyama, Japan.
https://tinyurl.com/yl45xlzm ...

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A scull nears the Memorial Bridge in Washington DC.
https://tinyurl.com/ypkmo4uu ...

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A dog. https://tinyurl.com/yt55lh68 ...

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Our painting of the week is "Autumn" (1935) (detail) by Fern
Isabel Coppedge (American, 1883-1951).
https://tinyurl.com/ywxbtoed ...

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