Theses and Dissertations
Issuing Body
Mississippi State University
Advisor
Belant, Jerrold L.
Committee Member
Martin, James A.
Committee Member
DeVault, Travis L.
Committee Member
Wang, Guiming
Date of Degree
12-15-2012
Document Type
Graduate Thesis - Open Access
Major
Wildlife and Fisheries Science
Degree Name
Master of Science
College
College of Forest Resources
Department
Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Abstract
Wildlife collisions with U.S. civil aircraft (hereafter incidents) pose safety and economic concerns. Terrestrial mammals represented only 2.3% of wildlife incidents, but 59% of these incidents caused damage to aircraft. I examined 2,558 incidents in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Wildlife Strike Database to characterize and analyze overall mammal incidents by airport type, emphasizing white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and bat incidents with U.S. civil aircraft. Mammal incidents caused 5 times greater damage than other wildlife which varied by airport type and appeared associated with species’ behavior. I provided relative hazard scores to determine which species were most hazardous to aircraft. Relative hazard increased with increasing body mass with mule deer (O. hemionus), white-tailed deer and domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) most hazardous to aircraft. White-tailed deer caused 6 times greater damage than all other wildlife and are hazardous to aircraft. In contrast, bats posed a low hazard to aircraft.
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19497
Recommended Citation
Biondi, Kristin Michele, "Patterns of Mammal Incidents with U.S. Civil Aircraft" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 3464.
https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/3464
Comments
wildlife strike||wildlife-aircraft incident||United States||mammals||aviation hazard||airport management||airport