Using a Time Series of Satellite Imagery to Study the Wild Birds' Migration

The first major outbreak of HPAI H5N1 virus in wild waterbirds took place in Qinghai Lake, western China, May 2005. During fall/winter of 2005 and spring 2006, H5N1 virus spread rapidly over Asia, Europe, and Africa. One hypothesis for the global patterns and dynamics of the spread of H5N1 virus is that seasonally migratory wild waterbirds may carry the virus and spread it along migratory flyways. Since 2007, Tens of waterbirds had been marked with GPS transmitters to get the migration tracks in Qinghai Lake. Satellite remote sensing is a useful tool to help analyzing the birds' GPS tracks. In this paper, we take advantage of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor images to study the birds' migration patens. How to process and use the massive remote sensing images efficiently across computer cluster is discussed detailedly. At last, land surface temperature and cloud coverage information are obtained and used to study the wild birds' migration.