Birds

The USGS and partners will survey bird and human activity on beaches in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to determine breeding bird response to stewardship activities aimed at protecting and recovering bird populations.

The USGS and the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP) conducted post-restoration monitoring of Piping Plovers and Red Knots to better understand how birds respond to coastal restoration.

USGS researchers and heir partners are capturing and banding birds that use man-made habitats to gather data on species occurrence, abundance, and energetic condition during autumn migration.

USGS WARC ecologists are assisting partners in conducting avian surveys on Chandeleur Islands during the pre-restoration monitoring phase to document threatened and endangered species, species richness and diversity, species abundance, and habitat use.

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.

The federally threatened piping plover relies on sand-beach habitat year-round for nesting, foraging, and roosting, habitat that is particularly vulnerable to loss and degradation from coastal development, recreation activities, erosion, and sea-level rise.

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.

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.

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.

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...

USGS scientists will be analyzing weather surveillance radar observations of birds departing stopover habitats to measure responses to climate change.

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.