DOI: 10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvpn
title: Biomass burning in the Neotropics is exposing migrating birds to elevated fine particulate matter concentrations

description: Aim: A unique risk faced by nocturnally migrating birds is the
 disorienting influence of artificial light at night (ALAN). ALAN
 originates from anthropogenic activities that can generate other forms of
 environmental pollution, including the emission of fine particulate matter
 (PM2.5). PM2.5 concentrations can display strong seasonal variation
 originating from natural and anthropogenic processes. How these processes
 affect seasonal associations with ALAN and PM2.5 for nocturnally
 migrating birds has not been documented. Location: Western Hemisphere Time
 period: 2021 Major taxa studied: Nocturnally migrating passerine (NMP)
 bird species Methods: We combined monthly estimates of PM2.5 and
 ALAN with weekly estimates of relative abundance for 164 NMP species
 within the Western Hemisphere derived using bird observations from eBird.
 We identify groups of species with shared associations with PM2.5.
 Results: PM2.5 was lowest in North America, especially at higher
 latitudes during the boreal winter. PM2.5 was highest in the Amazon Basin,
 especially during the dry season (August-October). ALAN was highest within
 eastern North America, especially during the boreal winter. For the NMP
 species, PM2.5 associations reached their lowest levels during the
 breeding season (&lt;10 μg/m3) and highest levels during the
 non-breeding season, especially for species that winter in Central and
 South America (~20 μg/m3). Species that migrate through Central America in
 the spring encountered similarly high PM2.5 concentrations. ALAN
 associations reached their highest levels for species that migrate (~12
 nW/cm2/sr) or spend the nonbreeding season (~15 nW/cm2/sr) in eastern
 North America. Main conclusions: We did not find evidence that the
 disorienting influence of ALAN enhances PM2.5 exposure during a stopover
 in the spring and autumn for NMP species. Rather, our findings suggest
 biomass burning in the Neotropics is exposing NMP species to consistently
 elevated PM2.5 concentrations for an extended period of their annual life
 cycles. 
description: # Biomass burning in the Neotropics is exposing migrating birds to
 elevated fine particulate matter concentrations
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvpn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvpn) Biomass burning in the Neotropics is exposing migrating birds to elevated fine particulate matter concentrations --- One CSV file containing the monthly observed associations with ground-level fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations and the radiance of artificial light at night (ALAN) for 164 nocturnally migrating passerine bird species. ## Description of the data and file structure data.csv The scientific name of the 164 nocturnally migrating passerine bird species (sci\_name), the month of year (month), weighted average PM2.5 (pm25.wavg), minimum PM2.5 (pm25.min), maximum PM2.5 (pm25.max), weighted average ALAN (alan.wavg), and weighted correlation between PM2.5 and ALAN (wcor). ## Sharing/Access information The bird occurrence data are available from https://ebird.org/data/download The PM2.5 data are available from https://sites.wustl.edu/acag/datasets/surface-pm2-5/ The ALAN data are available from https://eogdata.mines.edu/products/vnl/