Extracting Vertical Distribution of Aerial Migratory Animals Using Weather Radar

Seasonal migration of aerial animals have the characteristics of layer concentration at large scale. The large-scale horizontal homogeneity of the migratory animals causes dumbbell-shaped or ring-shaped radar echo patterns in weather radar products. Interpreting the vertical distribution of these migratory organisms from weather radar data is significant for biological and ecological researches. In this paper, we develop a biological observation model of weather radar and propose a method to determine the vertical distribution of these layered biological targets using regularization technique. This method is used to analyze the vertical distribution of biology at typical radar stations in eastern China during the migration season.