Monitoring Kittlitz’s and marbled murrelets in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve: 2011 annual report
Hoekman ST, Sergeant CJ, Johnson WF. 2013. Monitoring Kittlitz’s and marbled murrelets in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve: 2011 annual report. Natural Resource Technical Report. NPS/SEAN/NRTR—2013/811. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
Since 2009, the National Park Service’s Southeast Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network (SEAN) has monitored abundance and trend of Kittlitz's (Brachyramphus brevirostris, hereafter “KIMU”) and marbled murrelet (B. marmoratus, hereafter “MAMU”) populations in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The program arose from concerns over apparent regional and local KIMU population declines, their status as a candidate species for protection under the endangered Species Act, and the hypothesis that KIMU populations respond to fluctuations in drivers of the Glacier Bay ecosystem such as glacial extent and ocean productivity. SEAN monitoring focuses on estimating breeding season population abundance and trend primarily for KIMU and secondarily for MAMU. Boat-based line transect surveys are conducted during early July across a survey area covering >90% of Glacier Bay proper. The 2009 and 2010 annual KIMU monitoring reports, in conjunction with the final long-term monitoring protocol (Hoekman et al. 2013), provide complete protocol development details and fully describe monitoring methods. Please refer to the synthesis and program review report for monitoring of Kittlitz's murrelets in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve which contains important findings that may affect the interpretation of abundance estimates (Hoekman, S. T. 2019. Kittlitz’s murrelet monitoring in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve 2010–2018: Synthesis and program review. Natural Resource Report NPS/SEAN/NRR—2019/1957. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado, https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2265288). The report summarizes the results of murrelet monitoring from 2010-2018, assesses monitoring performance and capacity to meet protocol objectives, and provides recommendations for potential enhancements to the monitoring protocol. Hoekman (2019) identifies misidentification and partial identification of murrelets which can bias abundance estimation and spatially-explicit density estimates, particularly for rare species, such as Kittlitz’s murrelets.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hoekman, Steven; Sergeant, Christopher; Johnson, William
- Date of Issue
- 2013-10
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- GLBA , NRSS , SEAN
- Keywords
- Brachyramphus, Glacier Bay, Kittlitz's Murrelet, Marbled Murrelet, Murrelets, Population Status, Population Trend, Seabird
- Subjects
- Ecological Framework: Biological Integrity | Focal Species or Communities | Birds , Ecological Framework: Biological Integrity | At-risk Biota | T&E Species and Communities