BirdCast is a consortium of interdisciplinary researchers, primarily from three organizations at present, with a growing list of collaborators, supporters, and partners.
Core partners
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The Lab developed BirdCast with a collaborative EMPACT grant from EPA in 1999 and then furthered its evolution with a jointly awarded CDI grant from NSF in 2011. It currently provides support for research, development, maintenance, and outreach, content including research and data, and scientific expertise.
Colorado State University
The CSU Aeroeco Lab engages in research, analysis and modeling to develop forecasting, lights out and threshold data, and continental estimates of migration among other topics. Additionally, this group creates and supports visualizations including the forecast map and lights out imagery as well as providing content and management of social media (Twitter) updates.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst provides machine learning expertise, developing pipelines and workflows to create forecasts, analysis and datasets. Additionally, this group engages in machine learning research to develop and operationalize new radar processing workflows and visualizations such as roost rings.
Core funders
National Science Foundation
NSF IIS-1125098 provided initial funding to build, develop, support, maintain BirdCast and its components.
Leon Levy Foundation
This foundation provided essential follow-on funding to further develop, support, and maintain BirdCast.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon provides cloud credits that support and maintain BirdCast forecast and live bird migration maps that originate from public AWS datasets.
Other support
NOAA, US Geological Survey, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NASA, Microsoft
These organizations provide additional support, including in-kind donations, allowing for development, maintenance, and collaboration.
Other partners
Houston Audubon Society, Perot Museum, Dallas Zoo
These organizations are partners in the Lights Out Texas campaign, facilitating outreach, developing conservation and stakeholder action plans, and supporting on-the-ground activities in Texas.
