Landbird community monitoring at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park: 2012 data summary
Kurimo-Beechuk EA and Byrne M. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park: 2012 data summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1017. National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science. Fort Collins, Colorado
Birds are an important component of park ecosystems. Due to their high body temperature, rapid metabolism, and high ecological position in most food webs, birds are also good indicators of the effects of local and regional ecosystem changes. Patterns in the community composition, distribution, and occurrence of breeding birds provide a metric for assessing ecological integrity and sustainability in southeastern U. S. ecosystems. Further, trends in these attributes in relation to activities occurring at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park (e.g., management actions, natural disturbance, invasive-species treatment) will improve our understanding of the effects of various management actions and other stressors on the condition of park resources. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in 2012. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data from 28 of the 30 spatially balanced random locations at the park. 2. Approximately 1,600 minutes of recordings were collected during May–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Sixty-two species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. 4. Northern cardinal, Carolina wren, tufted titmouse, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch,Carolina chickadee, pine warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at 80% or more of all sampling locations). American crow was also widely distributed across the park, occurring at 70% of all sampling locations. 5. One non-native species, house finch, was detected during the sampling effort. 6. The full dataset, and associated metadata, can be acquired from the NPS data store at the Integrated Resource Management Applications portal (https:// irma.nps.gov/App/Portal/Home).
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth; Byrne, Michael
- Date of Issue
- 2016-05
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
- Units
- KEMO , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Birds, Distance estimation, Distribution, landbird monitoring, Monitoring, variable-circular plots