Thesis data with: The hidden cost of disturbance

Stay or fly away? Impact of human disturbance on shorebird individuals and populations

These data comprise the data of four chapters from the PhD thesis from van der Kolk (2021) entitled ‘Stay or fly away? Impact of human disturbance on shorebird individuals and populations.’ The thesis focusses on quantifying the impacts of human disturbance on oystercatchers. This dataset contains data from chapters 4, 5, 7 and 10.

For Chapter 4 field observations were done to observe how shorebirds responded to aircraft overflights at different sites. The data provides an overview of the disturbance probability (i.e. the probability that birds took flight) following aircraft overflights, for different bird species, locations and aircraft types. These data were used to test whether there was a relationship between aircraft overflight frequency and disturbance probability.

For Chapters 5 and 7 oystercatchers were equipped with GPS trackers to study the effects of disturbance on space use. The data of Chapter 5 provides GPS locations of oystercatchers in relation to the timings of military exercises. These data were used to quantify whether oystercatchers avoided the military training area during and immediately after military exercises. The data of Chapter 7 contains GPS locations of oystercatchers in relation to the moment of high tide and provides the roosting location. These data were used to study whether oystercatchers avoided a disturbed roost site in the tourist season.