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Deborah Buhl

Deb Buhl is a Statistician at the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, North Dakota.

As a statistician, I have analyzed data for numerous ecological projects, including assessing effects of wind turbines on grassland birds, density estimates of Siberian Cranes, nest success of American coots, and food habits of striped skunks.  I have analyzed data from a variety of animal species, including grassland birds, shorebirds, waterfowl, cranes, deer, badgers, skunks, and invertebrates, and from a variety of habitats including grasslands, forests, rivers, and wetlands.  I have applied numerous statistical techniques to ecological data including generalized linear mixed models, ordination, occupancy modeling, resource selection, distance sampling, repeated measures models, nest survival models, and power analyses.  Prior to being a statistician, I worked as a biological technician conducting research on waterfowl behavior, movement, and survival.

Professional Experience

  • Statistician, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

  • Student Trainee (Statistics), Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

  • Biological Technician (Wildlife), Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Education and Certifications

  • M.S., Statistics, North Dakota State University

  • B.S., Wildlife Management, University of Minnesota

Science and Products

Filter Total Items: 31

Understanding the Avian-Impact Offset Method—A tutorial

Biodiversity offsetting, or compensatory mitigation, is increasingly being used in temperate grassland and wetland ecosystems to compensate for unavoidable environmental damage from anthropogenic disturbances such as energy development and road construction. Energy-extraction and -generation facilities continue to proliferate across the natural landscapes of the United States, yet mitigation tools
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Sample size estimation for savanna monitoring protocol development

When designing data collection protocols for a new research project, it is important to have a large enough sample size to detect a desired effect, but not so large to be wasting time collecting more data than needed. Power analysis methods can be used to estimate this sample size. In this report, power analyses used to estimate sample sizes needed for a savanna monitoring study, for which the U.S
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Variation in foraging patterns as reflected by floral resources used by male vs female bees of selected species at Badlands National Park, SD

Female and male bees forage for different reasons: females provision nests with pollen appropriate for larval development and consume nectar for energy while males need only fuel their own energetic requirements. The expectation, therefore, is that females should visit fewer floral resource species than males, due to females’ focus on host plant species and their tie to the nest location. We use
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Floral resource selection by wild bees and honey bees in the Midwest United States: Implications for designing pollinator habitat

Many seed mix recommendations for creating pollinator habitat are in part based on anecdotal evidence or field observations of bees visiting forbs (i.e. use). However, there is limited information on what forbs are preferred by bees, particularly in working landscapes where bee forage may be limited. We examined floral resource selection by wild bees and honey bees on grasslands in the Midwest usi
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Coflowering invasive plants and a congener have neutral effects on fitness components of a rare endemic plant

Network analyses rarely include fitness components, such as germination, to tie invasive plants to population-level effects on the natives. We address this limitation in a previously studied network of flower visitors around a suite of native and invasive plants that includes an endemic plant at Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA. Eriogonum visheri coflowers with two abundant invasive plant
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Fire controls annual bromes in northern great plains grasslands—Up to a point

Concern about the impacts of two invasive annual brome grasses (cheatgrass and Japanese brome, Bromus tectorum L. and B. japonicus Thunb. ex Murray) on the mixed-grass prairie of North America's northern Great Plains (NGP) is growing. Cheatgrass is well known west of the NGP, where replacement of fire-intolerant, native sagebrush steppe by fire-prone, exotic annual grasslands is widespread. Conseq
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates.
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Evaluating the impacts of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) on vegetation within Pea Ridge National Military Park

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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Estimating offsets for avian displacement effects of anthropogenic impacts

Biodiversity offsetting, or compensatory mitigation, is increasingly being used in temperate grassland ecosystems to compensate for unavoidable environmental damage from anthropogenic developments such as transportation infrastructure, urbanization, and energy development. Pursuit of energy independence in the United States will expand domestic energy production. Concurrent with this increased gr
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Estimating indirect impacts of wind-energy development for breeding grassland birds and waterfowl in the northern Great Plains

No abstract available.
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Conserving all the pollinators: Variation in probability of pollen transport among insect taxa

As concern about declining pollinator populations mounts, it is important to understand the range of insect taxa that provide pollination services. We use pollen transport information acquired over three years in two habitats at Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA, to compare probabilities of pollen transport among insect taxa and between sexes of bees. Sampling was conducted on 1-ha plots,
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

The influence of local- and landscape-level factors on wetland breeding birds in the Prairie Pothole Region of North and South Dakota

We examined the relationship between local- (wetland) and landscape-level factors and breeding bird abundances on 1,190 depressional wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of North and South Dakota during the breeding seasons in 1995–97. The surveyed wetlands were selected from five wetland classes (alkali, permanent, semipermanent, seasonal, or temporary), two wetland types (natural or restored),
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
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Wind turbine, Minnesota

Estimating offsets for avian displacement effects of anthropogenic impacts

The avian-impact offset method (AIOM) quantifies the amount of habitat needed to provide equivalent biological value for birds displaced by energy and transportation infrastructure. The AIOM can be applied in situations where avian displacement (i.e., behavioral avoidance) requires compensatory mitigation. The AIOM is based on the ability to define five metrics: impact distance, impact area, pre...
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
link

Estimating offsets for avian displacement effects of anthropogenic impacts

The avian-impact offset method (AIOM) quantifies the amount of habitat needed to provide equivalent biological value for birds displaced by energy and transportation infrastructure. The AIOM can be applied in situations where avian displacement (i.e., behavioral avoidance) requires compensatory mitigation. The AIOM is based on the ability to define five metrics: impact distance, impact area, pre...
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Variation in pollen transport, Badlands NP, 2018

This dataset consists of data collected at Badlands National Park (Interior, SD) that were used in the analysis in support of the article titled "Conserving all the pollinators: Variation in probability of pollen transport among insect taxa," which has been submitted to "Natural Areas Journal." Data collected between May-October, 2010 and 2011, and June-July 2012 included insects found in contact
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Species Management Research Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Effects of wind-energy facilities on breeding grassland bird distributions - data release

This data release contains breeding-bird densities in native mixed-grass prairie collected from 2003 to 2012 at and adjacent to wind farms in North and South Dakota, USA, for one year prior to turbine construction and several years post-construction. One dataset contains breeding-bird densities per 100 ha by distance from turbines for categories of 0-100 m, 100-200 m, 200-300 m, and greater than 3
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Species Management Research Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

The influence of local- and landscape-level factors on wetland breeding birds in the Prairie Pothole Region of North and South Dakota dataset

The data set consists of data collected in 1995, 1996, and 1997 in wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota and South Dakota. The data were summarized and used in the analysis for a U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report entitled: The influence of local- and landscape-level factors on wetland breeding birds in the Prairie Pothole Region of North and South Dakota. The data consist of
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Species Management Research Program, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

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