All subcolonies on Bechervaise Island were mapped with a hand held GPS (Garmin Legend) on the 9th of January 2013). The mapping was undertaken by Julie McInnes and Helen Achurch. The colonies were mapped at a constant 2m buffer. If subcolonies were less than 2m apart they were mapped in the same outline, colonies greater than 2m apart were mapped separately. The final layer has a 2m buffer around the colony included in the layer. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Adelie colony boundaries at Bechervaise Island were mapped by Matthew Pauza on the 21 Dec 2016. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Etrex30) to record the track. When mapping the perimeter of the subcolonies a buffer distance of approximately 2.5 meters was maintained between the mapper and the breeding birds. This buffer distance was reduced by .5m to between 2m in the final shapefiles. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

Six colonies with breeding Adelie colonies were mapped this season on Kista Island. On Bechervaise Island subcolonies C and R were not mapped and so are missing from the final layer, but birds were present in these subcolonies. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx) to log the track taken. The person walking the perimeter of the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of approximately 2.5m between themselves and the breeding birds along the sub-colony boundary. This buffer distance was reduced to approximately 2m in the final shapefiles. 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 2009 and December 2010 (Southwell and Emmerson 2013) found a total of 2 Adelie penguin breeding sites in the Bolingen Island group between longitudes 75.333oE-75.912oE. The boundaries of breeding sub-colonies at 1 of these sites (Lichen Island, 73030) were subsequently mapped from vertical aerial photographs taken for abundance surveys on 20 November 2010 (for details of aerial photography see Southwell et al. 2013). The boundaries were mapped with a buffer distance of approximately 1-3 m from the perimeter of penguin sub-colonies. The other breeding site (73156) was photographed obliquely from a helicopter using a hand-held camera on 6 December 2010. Colony boundaries for this site were drawn and digitised by eye. 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 November 2006 found a total of 29 islands in the Robinson Group of islands had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The boundaries of breeding colonies at 27 of these islands with larger populations were subsequently mapped for abundance surveys by circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx or Vista C) to log the track taken. The person walking around the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of 2-5m between themselves and the penguins at the sub-colony boundary. This buffer distance was reduced to between 1 and 4m in the final shapefiles. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.

We estimate population size in terms of the number of occupied nests for the Adélie penguin metapopulation in western Mac. Robertson Land, East Antarctica in 2009/10 and 2019/20. We also assessed demographic data from a single breeding site in the central part of this area (Béchervaise Island: 67°35'S, 62°49'E) including reproductive success, resight data, and fledgling mass from 1991/92 to 2019/20. We collated environmental covariates of potential drivers in this area over the same time period from sources described below. These are presented in the file “Time series demography and environmental covariates.xls”. Environmental covariates: Sea-ice concentration: Summer sea-ice concentration (SIC) was obtained for the area bounded by longitudes 60 - 65°E, to the south by the Antarctic coastline and the north by latitude 66.75°S. This approximately 250 km stretch of coastline incorporates the location of all Adélie penguin breeding sites across the metapopulation. The area defines the most northerly limit of fast-ice during chick rearing and encompasses the longitudinal range of the birds’ summer foraging activities. The sea-ice contained within this ‘near-shore’ region is predominantly composed of fast-ice (ice that is attached to land but covers seawater). Summer SIC was calculated as an average over the three-week period 25th December to 15th January when adults are guarding chicks for each breeding season. Winter SIC was determined in the following three areas of the penguins’ winter migratory route as defined previously. Each area was defined between specific longitudes and from 50°S south to the Antarctic coastline. The sea-ice contained within this area is composed of fast-ice near the coastline and pack-ice (all sea-ice that is not fast-ice) beyond the fast-ice edge. Two sectors defined the outward journey as they travelled westward towards their winter foraging grounds (50 - 65°E during March, and 30 - 50°E during April), a winter area (15 - 30°E during May-Jul) was considered as the sea ice became more extensive with both 15-100% SIC and 15-80% SIC which is considered more in line with suitable winter foraging ice conditions. The final area was associated with their eastwards journey towards the colony (30 - 50°E during Aug-Sep). For each area and time period, an average SIC was determined for each year in each of these areas. SIC values reflect the total area (km2) covered in sea-ice between either 15-100% or 15-80% SIC in each year and time period using 25x25km pixels. Sea-ice data were obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) (Cavalieri et al. 1996) using Raadtools (Sumner 2017). Broad-scale climatic indices and local weather conditions: We determined the weather conditions during periods reflecting the end of the austral summer when the penguins were leaving their colonies (Feb-Mar) and the inter-breeding winter period (Apr-Sep). The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) were included as broad indicators of climatic conditions, and local weather conditions included air and windchill temperatures. SOI was obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (www.bom.gov.au) and SAM from the NOAA Climate Prediction Centre (http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao_index.html). Mawson Station local weather: Local weather data recorded at Mawson Station were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. We considered two covariates: windchill and air temperatures both reported in °C. Windchill temperatures were determined from the ambient air temperature, wind speed and the relative humidity: AT= Ta +0.33e-0.7ws-4.0, where Ta is the dry bulb temperature (°C), e is the water vapour pressure (hPa), and ws is the windspeed (ms-1) at 10 m elevation. Water vapour pressure was determined from: (see the actual equation in the download file - "Emmerson_AADC Metadata Records_GCB_2022.docx" - unable to be reproduced here), where rh is the relative

An occupancy survey in November 2006 found a total of 29 islands in the Robinson Group of islands had populations of breeding Adelie penguins. The boundaries of breeding colonies at 27 of these were mapped in Nov 2006 for abundance surveys. Nine of these breeding sites were remapped on the 29th of November 2013 in conjunction with colony counts. Subcolonies were mapped by circumnavigating the perimeter of sub-colonies on foot while carrying a Garmin GPS (Legend Cx) to log the track taken. The person walking around the sub-colonies maintained a buffer distance of approximately 2.5m between themselves and the breeding birds along the sub-colony boundary. This buffer distance was reduced to approximately 2m in the final shapefiles. 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.

Aerial photography (Linhof) of penguin colonies was acquired over the Svenner Islands (Eric Woehler). The penguin colonies were traced, then digitised (John Cox), and saved as DXF-files. Using the ArcView extension 'Register and Transform' (Tom Velthuis), the DXF-files were brought into a GIS and transformed to the appropriate islands.

Occupancy surveys in November 2009 and December 2010 (Southwell and Emmerson 2013) found a total of 15 Adelie penguin breeding sites in the Svenner Islands between longitudes 76.50oE to 77.50oE. The boundaries of breeding sub-colonies were subsequently mapped from vertical aerial photographs taken for abundance surveys on 20 November 2010 (for details of aerial photography see Southwell et al. 2013). The boundaries were mapped with a buffer distance of approximately 1-3 m from the perimeter of penguin sub-colonies. When photos of Island 73036 were viewed there was no colony to map so only 14 islands were mapped. Please refer to the Seabird Conservation Team Data Sharing Policy for use, acknowledgement and availability of data prior to downloading data.