Status and trends of landbird populations in the Northern Colorado Plateau Network: 2019 field season
Roberts SG, Tymkiw EL, Ladin ZS, Shriver WG. 2020. Status and trends of landbird populations in the Northern Colorado Plateau Network: 2019 field season. Natural Resource Report. NPS/NCPN/NRR—2020/2071. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
In 2019, the University of Delaware, in cooperation the National Park Service, completed the fourteenth year of a habitat-based landbird-monitoring program in park units of the Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN). This program is designed to provide rigor-ous population-trend data for most diurnal, regularly occurring, breeding landbird species throughout the network. This population information is useful for land managers and sup-ports the National Park Service’s goal of long-term monitoring of biological indicators for network parks. In 2019, university biologists surveyed 45 survey locations in 11 NCPN units. Fifteen transects were located in each of three habitats of interest: low-elevation riparian, pinyon-juniper, and sage shrubland. Each location was surveyed once. In addition to the habitat-based surveys, four point counts and an area search were conducted at Pipe Spring National Monument, using a modified monitoring design. Over 14 years of data collection, 14,273 point-count surveys have been conducted in 11 NCPN units, detecting 173 unique species. During the 2019 field season, 655 point-count surveys were conducted, detecting 111 unique species. Five new species were detected for this monitoring program: a sora (Porzana carolina) in Arches National Park, a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in Curecanti National Recreation Area, a northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) and a purple martin (Progne subis) in Dinosaur National Monument (NM), and an American redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) in Canyonlands National Park. North-ern saw-whet owl is listed as “present” on Dinosaur National Monument’s NPSpecies list, while purple martin is listed as “unconfirmed.” According to records from ebird (ebird.org, the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science program), there are only two con-firmed submissions of northern saw-whet owl detections and no previous confirmed detec-tions of purple martin. American redstart is not included on the NPSpecies list for Canyon-lands National Park, and has not been confirmed as detected in ebird records for the park, making this the first record of this species in this park. In total, 134 population-density trends were estimated across the three habitats. Twenty-one of the estimated density trends were significant (p-value <0.05), including 16 negative trends and five positive trends. There were sufficient sample sizes to estimate the densities of 63 spe-cies in at least one of the three habitats surveyed. Using a modified monitoring design, landbird monitoring surveys were conducted in Pipe Spring National Monument for the tenth year since 2009. A total of 115 individuals of 30 species were recorded. Sample sizes were too low for density trends to be estimated for Pipe Spring National Monument. Due to differences in distance-sampling methodology, all density estimates in this report should be considered to replace those found in previous reports.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Roberts, Samuel; Tymkiw, Elizabeth; Ladin, Zachary; Shriver, W.
- Date of Issue
- 2020-02
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- ARCH , BLCA , BRCA , CANY , CARE , COLM , CURE , DINO , FOBU , NABR , NCPN , NRSS , PISP , ZION
- Keywords
- Animal Studies, Birds, Monitoring, NCPN Landbird Monitoring