This dataset consists of two shapefiles created by Darren Southwell of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) by digitising the boundaries of adelie penguin colonies at the Rauer Group and the Vestfold Hills. The digitising was done from images resulting from the scanning and georeferencing of aerial photographs taken on 24 November 1993. The aerial photographs were taken for the AAD with a Linhof camera. Records of the photographs are included in the Australian Antarctic Data Centre's Aerial Photograph Catalogue.

The dataset contains boundaries of nest areas of surface nesting flying seabirds at numerous breeding sites across Prydz Bay, Antarctica. The sites are at islands in the Rauer Group, the Svenner Islands and two islands (Bluff Island and Gardner Island) off the Vestfold Hills. The boundary data were obtained from aerial photos of slopes where flying seabirds had been previously observed. The aerial photos were taken on 1 December 2017. Marcus Salton and Kim Kliska conducted the aerial photography and delineated the GIS boundaries representing the nesting areas. The database of potential Adelie penguin breeding habitat as described by the metadata record 'Sites of potential habitat for breeding Adelie penguins in East Antarctica' (http://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/AAS_4088_Adelie_Potential_Habitats) was used to associate flying seabird nest areas to a particular island and to structure how the boundaries are stored. The Adelie penguin breeding site database has a unique identifying code for every island in East Antarctica, and the islands are aggregated into spatial sub-groups and then spatial groups. The file structure in which the boundaries are stored has a combination of ‘island’, ‘sub-group’ and ‘spatial group’ (or region) at the top level (eg VES_SG_10 contains all boundaries in spatial group VES (Vestfold Hills and islands) and sub-group 10). Within each sub-group folder are folders for each island where photos were taken (eg IS_72276 is Gardner Island in the VES_SG_10 group). The data is comprised of: (i) a polygon shapefile for each island on which flying bird nest areas were observed; and (ii) a single polygon shapefile for each of Rauer Group, Svenner Islands and Vestfold Hills in which the polygons in (i) are combined. The polygons in the shapefiles have a Type attribute with values ranging from A to E. A = Nests present B = Searched and no nests present C = Nests or salt stains (the investigators were unable to decide whether what they were seeing was nests or salt stains) D = Snow cover E = Not searched

The dataset comprises Adelie penguin colony boundaries derived from oblique aerial photographs. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to AAT coastline polygon data and the boundaries of Adelie penguin colonies were digitised. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

The dataset comprises Adelie penguin colony boundaries derived from oblique aerial photographs taken towards the end of the 2014/15 summer between Mawson and Taylor Glacier. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to AAT coastline polygon data and the boundaries of Adelie penguin colonies were digitised. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Occupancy surveys in November 2008 (Southwell and Emmerson 2013) found a total of 31 Adelie penguin breeding sites off the Vestfold Hills. The boundaries of breeding sub-colonies at 26 of these sites were subsequently mapped from vertical aerial photographs taken for abundance surveys on 18-21 November 2009 (for details of aerial photography see Southwell et al. 2013). These boundaries were mapped with a buffer distance of approximately 1-3 m from the perimeter of penguin sub-colonies. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey on 21 January 2011 found a total of 7 islands along the Wilkes Land coastline had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The survey was conducted from a fixed wing aircraft and oblique aerial photographs were taken of each occupied site except Haswell Island. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to a satellite image and the boundaries of penguin colonies were digitised from the geo-referenced photos. Details for each island are: Adams: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a Quickbird satellite image taken on 30 January 2009 Fulmar: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a WorldView2 satellite image taken on 6 February 2011 Zykov: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a WorldView2 satellite image taken on 6 February 2011 Buromskiy: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a WorldView2 satellite image taken on 6 February 2011 Stroitley: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a WorldView2 satellite image taken on 6 February 2011 Tokarev: Photographs taken on 21 January 2011 and geo-referenced to a WorldView2 satellite image taken on 6 February 2011 Haswell: No photographs taken, no penguin colonies were digitised Note there are two colony boundary layers in each folder except Adams. One is the original layer mapped as above. The second is an adjusted layer that was created so that the mapped boundaries would land on the exposed rock layer. Mapping of some of the islands contained within the coast layer had been coarsely done using imagery available at the time. Now with more accurate satellite imagery the island mapping could potentially be updated which would more accurately locate these islands. If this occurred, the original colony boundary mapping may be a more appropriate fit. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey in January 2011 found a total of 14 islands/sites in Windmill group had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The boundaries of breeding colonies at 11 of the 14 islands were subsequently mapped for abundance surveys. Four of the islands, Nelly Island, Hollin Island, Midgley Island and Beall Island were mapped from aerial photos taken in January 2011. Images were taken on the 2 January 2011 [Hollin, Midgley, Beall] and 23 January 2011[Nelly]. Mapping involved digitising polygons around sub-colonies from vertical aerial photographs. The boundaries were mapped with a buffer distance of approximately 1-3 m from the perimeter of penguin sub-colonies. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey in December 2009-February 2010 and January 2011 found a total of 6 islands along the Knox coast had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The survey in 2009/10 was conducted from a fixed wing aircraft and oblique aerial photographs were taken of occupied sites. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to satellite images or the coastline shapefile from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA, tile E157) and the boundaries of penguin colonies were digitised from the geo-referenced photos. Details for each island are: Merrit: Photographs taken on 1 February 2010 and geo-referenced to LIMA tile E157 Cape Nutt: Photographs taken on 5 January 2010 and geo-referenced to a Quickbird satellite image taken on 17 February 2011 Ivanoff Head: Photographs taken on 27 December 2009 and geo-referenced to LIMA tile E157 Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

An occupancy survey on 26 January 2012 found 1 island (70166) along the coast between 111 degrees 00'E - 111 degrees 10'E had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The survey was conducted from a fixed wing aircraft and oblique aerial photographs were taken of the occupied site. The aerial photographs were geo-referenced to the coastline shapefile from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA, tile E158) and the boundaries of penguin colonies were digitised from the geo-referenced photos with not intentional buffer. Note the quality of the aerial photos was poor and so the resultant boundary mapping will not be very accurate. Also in the Balaena Islands there is a historic record from the 50s of penguins nesting on Thompson Islet (70166). When aerial photos were taken of this island penguins could not be detected. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

This dataset comprises oblique aerial photographs of multiple Adelie penguin breeding sites in East Antarctica. The photographs were taken using hand-held digital cameras from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters used by the Australian Antarctic Program. The aircraft flew at or above the minimum wildlife approach altitude of 750 m with a horizontal offset distance from the site of approximately 500-600m. The date and exact location of the aircraft when each photo was taken is embedded in the EXIF data of each photo. All photographs that were taken are included despite varying image quality due to environmental conditions, camera type and altitude. Generally an attempt was made to photograph the entire breeding site (usually an island, occasionally an outcrop of continental rock) with a series of zoomed, overlapping photos. Sometimes this was not possible when the site was large, and in these cases the overlapping photos covered the locations where colonies were known to exist from previous survey work. In some cases a site was over-flown at an altitude of 1200m so that a single photo of the entire site could be taken. These photos are useful in piecing together the detailed photos. The database of potential Adelie penguin breeding habitat in Southwell et al. (2016a) was used to associate photos to a particular breeding site and structure how the photos are stored. The breeding site database has a unique identifying code of every site of potential breeding habitat in East Antarctica, and the sites are aggregated into sub-groups and then groups. The file structure in which the photos are stored has a combination of ‘group’ and ‘split-year breeding season’ at the top level (eg VES 2015-16 contains all photos in group VES (Vestfold Hills and islands) taken in the 2015-16 breeding season). Within each group-year folder are sub-folders for each breeding site where photos were taken (eg IS_72276 is Gardner Island in the VES group). If an overview photo was taken there are separate sub-folders for overview and detailed photos in the site sub-folder. These data also superseded an earlier dataset of 2009-2016 data - https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/AAS_4088_Adelie_oblique_photos Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.