How to Log Guano Piles Without Floor-Level Disturbance

Guano stratigraphy carries a decade of colony isotope, diet, and Pd history — but logging piles with boots and tape measures disturbs floor sediment and torpid bats. EchoQuilt captures overhead 3D pile geometry from passive acoustic-motion patches, preserving DNA, isotope, and climate signal.

A Missouri surveyor in December measures a guano pile in a Myotis sodalis hibernaculum with a boot-planted tape. She is careful. She kneels outside the pile footprint, extends the tape, records depth and diameter, and leaves. What she does not see is the 3-centimeter disturbance her boot cleat left in the sediment 40 cm behind her. That sediment is Pd-positive, moisture-laden, and adjacent to a Myotis lucifugus cluster 6 meters above. Her disturbance did not wake the cluster, but it did redistribute airborne Pd spores and compromise a BC Government field guide-flagged sensitivity zone.