Mark Wimer
Science and Products
Breeding Birds
Patuxent science expands our understanding of the ecological relationships between breeding bird communities and their habitats. For example, Patuxent scientists follow structured decision-making principles to optimize the management of fresh-water and salt-marsh habitats to benefit wetland bird communities. Following pioneering studies documenting the effects of forest fragmentation on...
Breeding Bird Atlas Explorer
The Challenge: A Breeding Bird Atlas (BBA) is a widespread survey method that provides distribution maps for all bird species that nest in a specific state or province. Hundreds of participants fan out over several seasons to their assigned blocks on a systematic survey grid; they search for breeding evidence such as a male/female pair of a species on a branch (“possibly breeding”), or an...
Statistical guidelines for assessing marine avian hotspots and coldspots: A case study on wind energy development in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean
Estimating patterns of habitat use is challenging for marine avian species because seabirds tend to aggregate in large groups and it can be difficult to locate both individuals and groups in vast marine environments. We developed an approach to estimate the statistical power of discrete survey events to identify species-specific hotspots and...
Zipkin, Elise F.; Kinlan, Brian P.; Sussman, Allison; Rypkema, Diana; Wimer, Mark; O'Connell, Allan F. North American Breeding Bird Atlas viewer
The North American BBA Viewer allows searching and display of data from multiple Breeding Bird Atlases (BBAs). The BBA Viewer is part of a group of tools integrating maintenance and display of BBA results, from data entry to coordinator review to display of final maps. Currently we have compiled results from 16 completed atlases and manage 5 in-...
Wimer, M.; Peterjohn, B.; Ott, A.; Griffin, N. Possible distributional changes detected by a second breeding bird atlas in Maryland and the District of Columbia
First-run breeding bird atlases establish a baseline for detailed avian range maps. However, a single atlas provides no information on changes in distributional status over time. Maryland and D.C. have undertaken a second atlas to document two decades of change since the 1987 completion of the first MD/DC atlas. This project started in 2002 and...
Ellison, W.G.; Wimer, M.