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Evaluation of Survey Methods for Colonial Waterbirds at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota, data release

Dates

Publication Date
Start Date
2012
End Date
2013

Citation

Igl ,L.D., Bartos, A.J., Woodward, R.O., Scherr, P., and Sovada, M.A., 2020, Evaluation of Survey Methods for Colonial Waterbirds at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota, data release: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P90NK31K.

Summary

We investigated methods to estimate the number of nests of waterbirds at a large, mixed-species colony at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in south-central North Dakota in 2012 and 2013. The data were summarized and used in the analyses for a publication in a U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report. The data consist of two data sets that were used to assess visible-nest counts for ciconiiform species conducted from the perimeter of nesting areas (hereafter perimeter counts) and observational surveys from fixed points outside the colony to count flights of adult ciconiiforms in and out of the colony (hereafter flightline surveys) as alternatives to within-colony counts of ciconiiform nests.

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Chase_Lake_Flightline.csv 34.13 KB text/csv
Chase_Lake_Perimeter.csv 2.67 KB text/csv

Purpose

The primary goal of this study was to evaluate survey methods for shrub- and ground-nesting colonial waterbirds at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The specific objectives are: 1) to assess perimeter nest counts (2012) and flightline surveys (2013) as alternatives to within-colony ground-based counts of ciconiiform nests, and 2) to assess semiautomated, pixel-based image-analysis techniques to estimate abundance of American White Pelicans as alternatives to traditional manual counting methods. The data from the first objective are included in this data release; the data from the second objective are included in the associated U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report: Igl, L.D., Bartos, A.J. Woodward, R.O., Scherr, P., and Sovada, M.A., 2020, Evaluation of Survey Methods for Colonial Waterbirds at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, North Dakota: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report.

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Communities

  • Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
  • USGS Data Release Products

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Additional Information

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Type Scheme Key
DOI https://www.sciencebase.gov/vocab/category/item/identifier doi:10.5066/P90NK31K

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