Projects

 

Title: Breeding and post-breeding ecology of shorebirds at Barrow, Alaska
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Richard Lanctot, Audrey Taylor, and Abby Powell
Management implications/justification: Intensive studies on shorebirds were conducted at Barrow in the 1950s through early 1980s. Contemporary information for the area is lacking but would provide useful information for evaluating changes in shorebird breeding and post-breeding ecology that have occurred over the past 30 years. Intensive studies on shorebird demographic parameters are also needed to evaluate possible reasons for declines documented in these species.
Objectives: (1) To collect data on arrival date, nest initiation and effort, clutch and egg size, and hatching success of arctic-breeding shorebirds that can be compared to historic information, (2) to establish a marked population of at least four shorebird species and thereby obtain estimates of adult survival, mate and site fidelity, and natal philopatry, and (3) to conduct surveys for shorebirds in littoral areas at Point Barrow and relate physiological parameters of individual birds to post-breeding tenure and arrival and departure dates.
Project timeframe: 2003-2008.
Brief description of project: The study is being conducted at the Barrow Environmental Observatory near Barrow, Alaska. Shorebird nests are located using a variety of methods (i.e., area searches, rope-dragging) on plots and the fate of the nests are monitored. Adults and young are individually marked and followed over a five-year period to yield information on site and mate fidelity, survival, and other life-history parameters. Surveys are conducted in littoral areas at Point Barrow using point count or line transect techniques, and post-breeding adults are captured and assessed for levels of stress and fat metabolism rates. In 2005, post-breeding aerial and ground surveys are conducted at five locations along the Arctic Coast. Native students from Barrow and volunteers from outside Alaska are assisting in the project.

Title: Buff-breasted sandpipers in Brazil: numbers, movement and fidelity
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Juliana Almeida, Lewis Oring, and Richard Lanctot
Management implications/justification: Population estimates of buff-breasted sandpipers indicate the species has declined from hundreds of thousands during the late 1800’s to 15,000 – 25,000 individuals today. Intensive surveys conducted in December of 1999 and 2001 on the wintering grounds corroborate observations from breeding and migration areas that buff-breasted sandpiper populations still may be declining. A better understanding of seasonal change in buff-breasted sandpiper abundance and movement patterns within the wintering range is needed to interpret previous nonbreeding surveys and to determine timing and scale at which surveys should be conducted in the future. Such data will assist biologists in obtaining an accurate estimate of the size and trend of the buff-breasted sandpiper population.
Objectives: (1) To document within and between season site-fidelity and density of buff-breasted sandpipers at three major wintering sites in Brazil, (2) to monitor seasonal trends of body mass and molt of individual birds within sex and age classes, and (3) to collect blood for future collaborative studies on ecotoxicology and genetic population structure.
Project timeframe: 2003-2005.
Brief description of project: Surveys will be conducted at Lagoa do Peixe National Park, Ilha da Torotama and Taim Ecological Station located in Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. Birds will be captured, color-banded and equipped with radio-transmitters at the first and last sites. Resightings of marked birds within and across years will be used to assess site tenure and fidelity. Captured birds will be assessed for molt and body mass and compared across season, sexes, and sites.

Title: Population estimate for the buff-Breasted sandpiper
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Richard Lanctot, Daniel Blanco and Martin Oesterheld
Management implications/justification: Buff-breasted sandpipers are a species of high conservation concern within the United States, Canada, Argentina and Brazil. Factors that led to these designations were a small and declining population, and a relatively small wintering area within which birds concentrate. Ground surveys conducted in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in December of 1999 and 2001 indicated buff-breasted sandpiper densities were very low, and when compared to a small number of surveys conducted in the mid-1970s indicated the species was declining. There is an urgent need to use satellite images and image analysis software to determine the amount of available habitat and to extrapolate population density estimates to this larger area to generate an overall population size for the species.
Objectives: To determine the population size (with confidence intervals) of buff-breasted sandpipers in the world
Project timeframe: 1999 to present.
Brief description of project: To determine the potential amount of habitat suitable for buff-breasted sandpipers, we will perform an unsupervised classification of LANDSAT 5 and 7 images of the main nonbreeding area of each country, and associate this classification with the presence of buff-breasted sandpipers collected at numerous locations in 1999 and 2001. Next we will explore the association between buff-breasted sandpiper presence and vegetation units identified during ground surveys in each country. These two approaches represent the best opportunity to differentiate suitable buff-breasted sandpiper habitat from other taller vegetated lands. Once the suitable habitat for each country has been established, population density estimates from point count surveys will be extrapolated to estimate a population size.

Title: Distribution and abundance of shorebirds and waterbirds on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Jim Johnson, Jay Johnson, Joel Reynolds, Richard Lanctot, Steve Kendall, Dave Payer, and Stephen Brown.
Management implications/justification: The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act mandated studies of biological resources and potential petroleum reserves on 1.5 million acres in the northern part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A Biological Baseline Study of this area (known as the 1002 Area) was conducted from 1982 to 1985, and additional studies have continued through the present. Multi-year data are available on all of the large mammals. Bird studies are more limited, however, despite that approximately 150 species have been recorded on the coastal plain of the Refuge. More than 70 species are known to breed within the 1002 Area, including about 50 species of shorebirds and waterbirds. Seventeen of the shorebird species are listed as “high or moderate priority” in the Alaska Regional Shorebird Conservation Plan, and 6 shorebird and waterbird species are designated as “Birds of Conservation Concern” by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Because of the importance of this area for avian species and uncertainty about future land uses, there is an urgent need for reliable information about overall abundance and distribution of birds.
Objectives: To develop GIS maps that describe the distribution, diversity and relative abundance of shorebirds and other waterbirds across the coastal plain of the refuge, using predictive bird-habitat models.
Project timeframe: 2003-2005.
Brief description of project: Historic bird-occurrence and habitat data have been collated into a common database, and habitat-based models are being developed to predict the abundance of the most common shorebird and waterbird species, overall bird abundance, and species diversity. These models will be used to create predictive maps of shorebird and waterbird abundance and distribution for the 1002 Area. During the summer of 2004, we plan on conducting a field survey to assess the model predictions. Bird census methods at randomly selected plots will follow peer-reviewed protocols developed for the arctic region by the Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM).

Title: Digital aerial photography to survey shorebirds on the Copper River Flats
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): R. Michael Anthony, Paul Meyers, Dan Logan, and Richard Lanctot
Management implications/justification: The Copper and Bering River deltas form critical habitat for shorebirds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. The extensive coastal mudflats of the Delta comprise the single most important stopover site in the world for Western sandpiper and Pacific dunlin. Indeed, as many as 5 million shorebirds stop on the Delta during 4 weeks of spring migration. With more than 30 species of shorebirds nesting or stopping, the Delta has been designated both a hemispheric site in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network and a State of Alaska Critical Habitat Area. Because of its large shorebird density and the short duration of stay, estimating the population of birds stopping on the Delta is problematic. The accuracy of visual estimation with such large numbers of moving birds has not been tested and is likely to contain considerable observer bias. Successful development of digital aerial photography methods for counting shorebirds is needed so biologists can assess shorebird use of coastal areas during migration or when wintering.
Objectives: To test whether digital aerial photography could be used to count shorebirds roosting along the Copper and Bering River deltas.
Project timeframe: 2003-2005.
Brief description of project: In the spring of 2003, aerial digital photographs were taken from a Cessna-185 airplane with a vertically mounted Nikon digital camera on the Copper and Bering River deltas. Shorebirds on these images were counted manually in Photoshop and automatically using a custom program written in MatLab Image-processing Toolbox. Image quality was sufficient to discriminate between birds and background, and automated detection routines had high accuracy. To determine the precision of various sampling efforts, we constructed pseudo-populations of shorebird flocks that were subsequently repeatedly counted using Monte Carlo sampling techniques. As might be expected, greater sampling effort (i.e., more survey transects) was required to obtain similar precision in simulations with more dispersed flocks relative to concentrated flocks. Simulated sampling resulted in a precision of ± 10%. More study is needed to determine how these methods could be applied to larger areas, and additional information on how birds distribute themselves in relation to tide cycles is needed to more accurately conduct simulation tests. Finally, further photographic experiments are needed to determine (1) the effects of low light and various feeding substrates on the visibility of birds, and (2) the optimum image scale for automated counting of birds with the least sampling effort and greatest precision. Information learned this past summer may allow aerial digital photography to be used on species that frequent more restricted staging areas, especially locations where favorable weather conditions would allow more predictable flight schedules.

Title: Implementation of Arctic PRISM
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Richard Lanctot, Brian McCaffery, Stephen Brown, and Jon Bart
Management implications/justification: There is a growing agreement among shorebird biologists from North America and around the world that many shorebird populations are declining. Obtaining estimates of shorebird population sizes and eventually trends has been identified as a major shorebird conservation goal by the Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM), the shorebird monitoring initiative organized by Canada and the United State following completion of the national shorebird conservation plans in both countries.
Objectives: To document more rigorously the status and trend of shorebirds in Arctic regions of North America.
Project timeframe: 1997 - present.
Brief description of project: Jon Bart and Susan Earnst developed the use of double sampling to estimate numbers of shorebirds present on sample plots near the Colville River Delta, Alaska, between 1997 and 1999. This approach coupled with habitat-based regression models was proposed as a way to extrapolate densities from plots to larger study areas. The double sampling methodology was applied to the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska, in 2000 and 2001. In 2002 and 2003, biologists in several locations throughout the Arctic tested assumptions inherent to the double-sampling protocol. A panel review of the PRISM protocol is on-going and pending successful review, future implementation of the program is planned.

Title: Contaminants in Alaskan Shorebird Eggs
Station: Migratory Bird Management
Principal Investigator(s): Angela Matz and Richard Lanctot
Management implications/justification: Many shorebird species have exhibited population declines. Despite the curtailment of market hunting, many species have continued to decline. These declines may be a result of illegal hunting, disturbance, continued habitat loss and degradation, or environmental contaminants. Information on contaminant exposure in shorebirds is limited. In Alaska, limited data from several shorebird species collected in 1984 indicated that shorebirds had higher body burdens of organochlorine contaminants than non-shorebirds. Shorebird ecology makes them potentially vulnerable to persistent contaminant exposure and effects. To evaluate current contaminant concentrations in shorebirds breeding in Alaska, we collected shorebird eggs during the 2002 breeding season. In general, there were very low or non-detectable concentrations of persistent organic contaminants, heavy metals, and metalloids. Low sample size prevented us from testing for differences between species or areas, and additional samples are needed to conclusively state that the contaminants we measured (persistent organic pollutants and metals) are unlikely to be affecting populations.
Objectives: To determine background levels of heavy metals and persistent organochlorines (DDT and PCBs) in the eggs of fifteen migrant shorebirds that breed in Alaska.
Project timeframe: 2002-2005
Brief description of project: Eggs will be collected opportunistically during other studies on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields, Seward Peninsula, Prince William Sound, Middleton Island, and St. Paul and St. George islands. Collected eggs will be processed using standard methods, and heavy metals and organochlorines will be analyzed by standard methods using either Fish and Wildlife Service Contract laboratories or the Patuxent Analytical Control Facility.