Birds

USGS will deploy a small, portable radar aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel to measure the abundance, geographic distribution, and flight altitude of birds migrating across the continental shelf of the northern Gulf.

Researchers are investigating beach compaction, the incubation environment for turtle nests, and shorebird nest abundance at beaches throughout the southeastern United States to better understand the impacts of beach compaction to nesting turtles and foraging seabirds.

USGS researchers will examine how hydrology and landscape vegetation changes impact Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow survival and population growth.

Researchers will use a multi-scale approach to determine how barrier construction and lighting may impact migratory birds in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

The USGS is participating in the Louisiana-Trustee Implementation Group Monitoring and Adaptive Management work group to assess the injuries caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to select the appropriate restoration measures to compensate the public for the injury to coastal and marine resources.

The Gulf Coast Joint Venture (GCJV) was established in 1988 as a result of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, which espouses the restoration of continental waterfowl populations through conservation partnerships in priority habitat regions. Since that time GCJV partners have expanded their mission and purpose to include the provision of habitat to support other priority bird species...

To assess use of dredge material areas, avian ecologists from USGS WARC are conducting bird surveys across the annual life cycle.

Goals of the ATLSS Program are to help achieve a better understanding of components of the Everglades ecosystem, to provide an integrative tool for empirical studies, and to apply these tools to an adaptive management framework.

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of Brown Pelican breeding pairs on islands in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of breeding pairs of Black Skimmer and Gull-billed Tern along the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Using ecological and geographical data, WARC researchers and their partners are analyzing avian and benthic sampling on Whiskey Island and Caminda Headland to compare pre- and post-restoration aspects of habitat occupancy, habitat availability, habitat use, and kernal density estimation.

USGS scientists are using a spatially-explicit Bayesian network model to predict the difference between energetic value and energetic demand for stopover habitats for migrating landbirds.