Birds

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

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.

USGS is collaborating with Mississippi State University to investigate the effects of fire on Gulf of Mexico marshes. The project will include mapping high marsh and monitoring black rail, yellow rail, and mottled duck responses to prescribed fire application.

Mottled ducks rely on the coastal marshes of the Texas Chenier Plain, which are considered among the most critically endangered habitats in the United States. USGS scientists are evaluating what might be contributing to the degradation of high-quality mottled duck habitat to better understand the causes of habitat loss and subsequently mitigate those losses.

USGS uses weather surveillance radar data and landscape-scale habitat metrics to model bird-habitat connections along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

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.