Protocol implementation plan for riparian landbird monitoring in Pinnacles National Park

Humple, Diana; Dettling, Mark; Wakamiya, Sarah; George, Daniel

This protocol implementation plan (PIP) details the monitoring plan for landbirds in riparian habitat in Pinnacles National Park (PINN) in the San Francisco Bay Area Network of parks (SFAN). The Riparian Landbird Monitoring Protocol for Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore (GOGA and PORE, respectively; Gardali et al. 2010), two other major parks in this Network, serves as the basis for this plan. The purpose of a PIP to describe how a source published protocol will be used to meet Network monitoring objectives. This PIP outlines the means by which monitoring data will be collected, managed, and reported by Point Blue, in collaboration with NPS, for the Landbirds Vital Sign at PINN. This will be done in accordance with the approved and peer-reviewed protocols for GOGA and PORE (Gardali et al. 2010), with minor modifications to those methods and the associated Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as described herein. Specifically, implementation of the riparian landbird monitoring protocol at PINN will occur with the following modifications from GOGA and PORE: 1) Sampling at PINN will occur every third year, as it does at GOGA and PORE, but in a different year than in GOGA and PORE (see Monitoring Schedule below for details). It will not include the additional annual sampling done at a subset of points at Point Blue’s intensive core long-term study sites in GOGA and PORE, where data was collected annually prior to development of the monitoring protocol (Gardali et al. 2010). 2) Timing of sampling will begin and end slightly earlier in the season at PINN than at GOGA and PORE (with the sampling window starting 1 week earlier and extending for 1.5 months instead of 2 months; see Monitoring Schedule and Standard Operating Procedures below for details) due to considerably higher temperatures late in the season at PINN compared to the other parks, and a concurrently-earlier reduction in bird activity (as observed by protocol authors and other biologists from Point Blue and PINN). 3) Sampling will be restricted to point count surveys, with no constant effort mist-netting program to be implemented in PINN, due to limited resources and the logistical constraints associated with the latter protocol. There is a 50-year legacy of mist-netting at GOGA and PORE that is done both at and out of a permanent Point Blue field station in PORE (Point Blue’s Palomarin Field Station; see Porzig et al. 2011). As a result, assessments of survival and productivity, and abundance during non-breeding seasons, are outside the scope or objectives for monitoring in PINN, where the effort focuses on evaluating long-term changes in breeding bird abundance (see What’s Being Measured and How below for details). 4) Sampling, which will occur at a combination of new and legacy point count transects, will include some non-riparian habitat, as many legacy transects are a mix of riparian and non-riparian habitat (see What’s Being Measured and How below for details). At all three parks, non-riparian upland habitat is frequently sampled even at riparian points, due to the spatial structure of the often-linear riparian habitat corridor and the manner in which the area around each point is surveyed with the point count method.

Protocol implementation plan for riparian landbird monitoring in Pinnacles National Park

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