Final Report: Understanding the Links between Climate and Waterbirds across North America

The global mean surface temperature increased 0.85°C during the period 1880 – 2012. Some climate models predict an additional warming of up 2 to 4 ◦ C over the next 100 years for the primary breeding grounds for North American ducks. Such an increase has been predicted to reduce mid - continent breeding duck populations by >70%. Managing continental duck populations in the face of climate change requires understanding how waterfowl have responded to historical spatio - temporal climatic variation. However, such responses to climate may be obscured by how ducks respond to variation in land cover. We estimated effects of climate on settlement patterns of breeding ducks in the Prairie - Parkland Region (PPR), boreal...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Report; Tags: Alaska CASC, Birds, Wildlife and Plants, adaptive management, agriculture, All tags... boreal forest, climate change, colonization, extinction, fire, occupancy models, prairie-parkland region, precipitation, temperature, tundra, Fewer tags

Avian Indicators of Climate Change Based on the North American Breeding Bird Survey

Appropriate ecological indicators of climate change can be used to measure concurrent changes in ecological systems, inform management decisions, and potentially to project the consequences of climate change. However, many of the available indicators for North American birds do not account for imperfect observation. We proposed to use correlated-detection occupancy models to develop indicators from the North American Breeding Bird Survey data. The indicators were used to test hypotheses regarding changes in range and distribution of breeding birds. The results will support the Northeast Climate Science Center’s Science Agenda, including the science priority: researching ecological vulnerability and species response...

Categories: Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2014, 2014, Birds, Birds, CASC, All tags... CASC, Climate indicators, Completed, Migratory birds, North American Breeding Bird Survey, Northeast, Northeast CASC, Northeast CASC, Projects by Region, Wildlife and Plants, Wildlife and Plants, occupancy models, Fewer tags

Estimating indices of range shifts in birds using dynamic models when detection is imperfect

Abstract (from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26990459): There is intense interest in basic and applied ecology about the effect of global change on current and future species distributions. Projections based on widely used static modeling methods implicitly assume that species are in equilibrium with the environment and that detection during surveys is perfect. We used multiseason correlated detection occupancy models, which avoid these assumptions, to relate climate data to distributional shifts of Louisiana Waterthrush in the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data. We summarized these shifts with indices of range size and position and compared them to the same indices obtained using more basic modeling...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Birds, Louisiana Waterthrush, Northeast CASC, Parkesia motacilla, Wildlife and Plants, All tags... breeding bird survey, climate change, ecological forecasts, occupancy models, population dynamics, species distribution models, Fewer tags