A subsidiary page of The Radar Entomology Web Site.

The major steps in the development of radar entomology. For the period 1968-88, see also Reynolds (1988).

The Radar Entomology Observation Campaigns page provides a comprehensive chronological list of field exercises.

For events since 1 January 1996, and for announcements of planned meetings, activities, etc., see What's New In Radar Entomology.

Some milestones in the development of radar entomology (to December 1995):-

 1949. A.B. Crawford first confirms radar detection of insects (Crawford 1949).

 1954. First radar detection of locust swarms by British warship in Persian Gulf (Rainey 1955).

 1962. Desert locust swarms observed with meteorological radar in India (Ramana Murty et al. 1964; Mazumdar, Bhaskara Rao & Gupta 1965).

 1965a. Insect origin of "dot angels" (i.e. much "clear-air echo", Battan 1973) reconfirmed in multi-wavelength radar trials at NASA's Wallops Island laboratories (Glover et al. 1966).

1965b. First program to develop a radar specifically for entomological observations initiated by DLCOEA (Taylor 1966).

 1968. G.W. Schaefer builds first special-purpose entomological radar and takes it to the Sahara in a collaboration with the Anti-Locust Research Centre (a forerunner of NRI). Many new phenomena are discovered and the technique's utility for insect migration research is clearly established. "Radar entomology" is born. (Schaefer 1969, 1970, 1976; Roffey 1969).

 1969. Mosquito clouds detected with USAElC military radar, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, U.S.A. (Frost 1970)

 1971. First radar-entomology exercise in Australia, a collaboration between G.W. Schaefer and CSIRO (Schaefer 1976; Roffey 1972).

 1972. First field observations by COPR (now NRI) radar entomology program, of desert locusts in Saudi Arabia (Riley 1973, 1974).

 1975a. First airborne entomological radar flown by G.W. Schaefer and associates, in a study of spruce budworm migration over New Brunswick, Canada. (Schaefer 1979; Greenbank, Schaefer & Rainey 1980).

 1975b. First observations of alignment of individual insects, made with a rotating-polarisation vertical-pointing entomological radar developed by COPR and operated in Mali. (Riley & Reynolds 1979).

 1978. USDA-ARS radar entomology program (at WCRL) makes its first field observations, of insects over a cottonfield and adjacent desert, near Phoenix, Arizona (Wolf 1979).

 1982. First shipborne entomological radar, used in a study of insect (especially moth) migration over the Gulf of Mexico (Wolf et al. 1986).

 1983. First field use (at Los Banos, Philippines) of millimetric entomological radar (developed by TDRI) (Riley 1992).

 198x. Doppler radar technology first used to measure speeds of free-flying insects (honeybees), Atlanta, Georgia. (Wolf, Loper & Greneker 1987).

 1984. Radar entomology commences in China, with the JAAS entomological radar (photo) making its first observations of a natural insect population - meadow moths (in Ying county of Shanxi province) (Chen et al. 1992, Sun 1998). (Click here for a brief account of the JAAS program.)

 ~1983-1986. Program of development of a nutating-beam, rotating polarization ("ZLC-configuration") vertical-looking radar (at RES, U.K.) for automatic monitoring of aphid migration (Bent 1984). A prototype ZLC-type radar was also developed around this time by TDRI; it underwent a trial in India in 1985.

 1985a. Radar first used to study honeybee flight, including drone congregations. (Loper, Wolf & Taylor 1987, 1988).

 1985b. Harmonic radar developed for studying walking movements by beetles (Mascanzoni & Wallin 1986).

  1990. First year-long sequence of radar observations of migrating insects obtained, by K.R. Beerwinkle, P.G. Schleider, and APRMU colleagues with their automatic Vertical Looking Radar located near College Station, Texas, U.S.A. (Beerwinkle, Witz & Schleider 1993; Beerwinkle et al. 1995).

 1991. First simultaneous retrieval of track, speed, heading, and size of individual migrating insects from a rotating-polarisation/nutating-beam vertical-looking entomological radar, using algorithm developed by Department of Mathematics, University of Manchester and NRIRU; data obtained at Narrabri, Australia, by NRIRU in conjunction with CSIRO and ASOP. (Riley & Reynolds 1993; Smith, Riley & Gregory 1993).

  1992 (?). First entomological use of ground-penetrating radar - to detect termite nests in dykes and dams - by Guangdong Institute of New Technique on Geology, Academia Sinica with Guangdong Institute of Entomology (Xu et al. 1996).

  1995. Scanning harmonic entomological radar developed by NRIRU. Field trials show it capable of tracking diode-tagged bees and bumblebees (photo) in flight (Riley et al. 1996; Carreck 1996, Williams et al. 2000). Extremely light harmonic-radar tags shown effective in field tests (Roland et al. 1996).

  1998-99. Year-long monitoring of insect migratory activity with automatic rotating-polarisation/nutating-beam vertical-looking entomological radars commenced in Australia (night-time only) in May 1998 (ASOP) and in the UK (day and night) in May 1999 (NRIRU). By late 1999, two units were operational in both countries. The Australian operation is also noteworthy because the radars are installed hundreds of kilometres from the base laboratory, with data downloaded via a telephone connection. The UK operation follows a summer-long trial in 1995 (Smith et al. 2000).

  2000. Radar identified in an Annual Review of Entomology review (Chapman 2000) as one of a number of key enabling technologies that had an "enormous" impact on the development of entomology during the twentieth century.

There have been over 80 significant radar entomology observation campaigns since 1968.

If you'd like to make a contribution to this page, or suggest an appropriate link, email Alistair Drake at Alistair.Drake@adfa.edu.au.

Back to: Radar Entomology - an Introduction.

Last revised 2002Jan21, by Alistair Drake. (a.drake@adfa.edu.au).