Ask Robb Macleod how his work as Ducks Unlimited’s national geospatial coordinator supports the organization’s conservation planning efforts, and his answer is simple. “Everything DU does is spatial,” Macleod explains. “If we want to provide habitat for waterfowl, we need to know the where and the what—where the ducks are, where the habitat is, and what type of habitat we’re working with.” All those inquiries require access to geospatial data—data that are geographically linked to specific locations on Earth.
And that’s where Macleod and the rest of DU’s geospatial team come in. These experts are tasked with compiling geospatial data from a wide array of sources. They gather optical and radar imagery of Earth generated by various satellite systems as well as aerial imagery from airplane surveys. They also tap into numerous public and private datasets that track statistics such as land parcel ownership, conservation easements, trends in wetland and grassland loss, soil types, land use practices, ecosystem services, and more. Recently more novel sources have come into play, such as citizen-science data from the mobile app eBird, managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In the last few years, DU biologists and engineers have been entering geospatial data about their projects too.
This wealth of data is analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and converted into layers of geographically linked information that can be used to visualize the characteristics of specific locations on Earth. These GIS layers can be combined in any number of ways to produce customized maps, applications, and interactive models. Web pages called StoryMaps highlight DU’s work by incorporating landscape images, photos, text, and other interactive multimedia content. Analytical models called decision support tools optimize the use of limited resources by projecting different possible scenarios and their associated outcomes. Habitat mapping based on satellite and aerial imagery is used to classify, inventory, and evaluate wetlands and other habitats where DU works and to track changes to those habitats over time.
These GIS-based tools are used by teams across DU and are often shared with partners such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Migratory Bird Joint Ventures, state agencies, and university collaborators. They’re truly foundational to DU’s conservation planning and science efforts, says Macleod, because they allow DU to allocate limited resources to achieve maximum impact.
This field has certainly evolved since DU launched its geospatial team back in 1984. Macleod says that creates challenges and opportunities alike. “There’s a lot more data available now,” he says. “The hard part is figuring out how to use it and how to store it and analyze it.” Cloud computing has been a game changer, as it allows for processing huge amounts of data in minutes or hours. Advances have happened in remote sensing capabilities too. NASA has just launched a radar satellite (NISAR) that will provide additional imagery with unique properties. Radar technology can penetrate clouds and vegetation and detect soil moisture. Satellite images also have higher precision and resolution than in the past, and satellites are taking images of Earth at rates faster than ever before. This all makes for better detection and monitoring of wetland conditions at large scales.
Such advancements are aiding the innovative work of the University of Montana James C. Kennedy Waterfowl and Wetland Center’s Wildlife Biologist and DU Research Scientist Dr. Patrick Donnelly. His work focuses on waterfowl movements and their interactions with flyways.
Donnelly needed a way to better assess and track wetland conditions simultaneously across North America’s priority breeding areas, from Alaska to the Prairie Pothole Region. To test this idea, Donnelly conducted a pilot study in his own backyard, analyzing more than 40 years of satellite imagery collected across 11 states in the western United States. Specifically, Donnelly accessed nearly 150,000 individual satellite images to examine monthly wetland habitat conditions from 1984 to 2025. This period overlapped with droughts in important waterfowl landscapes in the West, such as the Central Valley of California and the Great Salt Lake, which were used to evaluate how well the models detected wetland change.
“I was able to measure where wetlands are wet, how long they are flooded, and how frequently flooding occurred to reconstruct a history of surface water and wetland change over time,” Donnelly says. The results demonstrate a first-of-its-kind framework for tracking historic and current wetland conditions at a flyway scale. Donnelly is integrating this framework into his waterfowl movement research to determine how GPS-marked ducks are responding to changing habitat conditions across the continent. “This approach connects our emerging ability to track waterfowl movement with the real-time habitat conditions that influence migration," Donnelly explains. "It also allows for the examination of breeding areas in their entirety. It is important to point out that May pond counts don’t exist for the Alaska and Boreal portions of the North American Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey. These new monitoring techniques will fill that knowledge gap, making it possible to determine whether changes to one region may be affecting breeding ducks in others.”
Donnelly is currently testing the model in priority breeding areas in Alaska, focusing on recent storm surge impacts to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, one of the most significant waterfowl breeding landscapes in the Pacific Flyway. There are plenty of other promising research applications for this work as well, and Donnelly says these tools will likely be applied to key wintering landscapes in the future. “We have essentially created a spatially explicit catalog of long-term habitat trends and real-time wetland conditions that can be manipulated to fit a diversity of conservation questions. Imagine the capacity to monitor an entire flyway to pinpoint habitat needs and deliver projects to support waterfowl where it matters the most. This is DU science and innovation for a changing world,” he says.
Macleod says innovations like those that Donnelly and the GIS team are developing distinguish DU as a leader in its field. “DU has built a tremendous team of geospatial experts, especially in the wetlands arena,” he explains. “We’re very well known for that expertise, and we are one of the groups people go to for wetland mapping and geospatial analysis.”
