The 1,174 ha Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is located in Hennepin County, 16.2 km southwest of downtown St. Paul and 14.6 km southeast of Minneapolis. Minnesota State Highway 62 and military and residential housing border the airport on the north. Fort Snelling State Park, the Mississippi River, and the Minnesota River comprise the eastern border. The southern border consists of U.S. Interstate Highway 494. The Rich Acres Golf Course lies along the western fenceline of the airport (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. The location of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport study area and banding sites, Minnesota.
The airport is the largest in the five-state
region (Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) and
19th largest in the conterminous United States. Combined with six
MAC-owned reliever airports in the Twin
Cities Metropolitan Area, the system is the third busiest in the world
(T.B. Haberkorn, MAC, pers. commun.). During this study, the
International Airport averaged 900 aircraft operations per weekday; peak
daily averages occurred at 12:00-12:30 p.m. (67 operations), 5:00-5:30
p.m. (59 operations), 8:00-8:30 a.m. (43 operations), and 8:00-8:30 p.m.
(42 operations).
The study area encompassed Canada goose
brood-rearing sites within 10 km of the airport, plus intensively
monitored feeding and roosting sites on and near the airport. Goose
brood-rearing sites occurred in the cities of Bloomington, Burnsville,
Edina, Minneapolis, Mendota Heights, Richfield, and West St. Paul. These
areas included city parks, golf courses, Fort Snelling State Park, the
Minnesota River Valley National Wildlife Refuge, unaltered wetlands and
lakes, and two nature centers (Fig. 1). The airport study area (ASA)
consisted of goose concentration locations adjacent to, or on, the
airport (Mother Lake, Rich Acres Golf Course, and Fort Snelling National
Cemetery), and, based on 1984 observations, sites where goose flights
through the operations airspace typically originated or terminated (Apple
Lake, Lake Hiawatha, Lake Nokomis, and Snelling Lake).