Sound management of migratory bird breeding populations in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region hinges on effective monitoring programs and comprehensive analyses of long-term survey data. To this end, Northern Prairie provides support to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in several important areas. The Four-Square-Mile Breeding Duck and Habitat Survey was developed by Northern Prairie in the mid-1980s and has been conducted annually by FWS refuge personnel under leadership by their Habitat and Population Evaluation Teams (HAPET) since the late 1980s. A concurrent effort to assemble and archive information on duck nest survival from studies conducted by NPWRC and dozens of partners has resulted in a database of nearly 150,000 nest records spanning 62 years, 11 states, and 3 provinces. Northern Prairie, in cooperation with HAPET, periodically analyzes these two long-term data sets to improve understanding of duck settling ecology and to update estimates of duck nest survival. These and other analyses fuel decision support tools used by Prairie Pothole Joint Venture partners to prioritize and target conservation efforts.
Below are publications associated with this project.
Sparrow nest survival in relation to prescribed fire and woody plant invasion in a northern mixed-grass prairie
Contrasting nest survival patterns for ducks and songbirds in northern mixed-grass prairie
- Overview
Sound management of migratory bird breeding populations in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region hinges on effective monitoring programs and comprehensive analyses of long-term survey data. To this end, Northern Prairie provides support to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in several important areas. The Four-Square-Mile Breeding Duck and Habitat Survey was developed by Northern Prairie in the mid-1980s and has been conducted annually by FWS refuge personnel under leadership by their Habitat and Population Evaluation Teams (HAPET) since the late 1980s. A concurrent effort to assemble and archive information on duck nest survival from studies conducted by NPWRC and dozens of partners has resulted in a database of nearly 150,000 nest records spanning 62 years, 11 states, and 3 provinces. Northern Prairie, in cooperation with HAPET, periodically analyzes these two long-term data sets to improve understanding of duck settling ecology and to update estimates of duck nest survival. These and other analyses fuel decision support tools used by Prairie Pothole Joint Venture partners to prioritize and target conservation efforts.
- Publications
Below are publications associated with this project.
Sparrow nest survival in relation to prescribed fire and woody plant invasion in a northern mixed-grass prairie
Prescribed fire is used to reverse invasion by woody vegetation on grasslands, but managers often are uncertain whether influences of shrub and tree reduction outweigh potential effects of fire on nest survival of grassland birds. During the 2001–2003 breeding seasons, we examined relationships of prescribed fire and woody vegetation to nest survival of clay-colored sparrow (Spizella pallida) andContrasting nest survival patterns for ducks and songbirds in northern mixed-grass prairie
Management actions intended to protect or improve habitat for ducks may benefit grassland-nesting passerines, but scant information is available to explore this assumption. During 1998–2003, we examined nest survival of ducks and songbirds to determine whether effects of prescribed fire and other habitat features (e.g., shrub cover and distance to habitat edges) were similar for ducks and passerin