North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2007 field season
Siegel RB, Wilkerson RL, Kuntz RC. 2008. North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2007 field season. Natural Resource Technical Report. NPS/NCCN/NRTR—2008/114. National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center. Fort Collins, Colorado
In 2007 we fully implemented the landbird monitoring program in the North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) for the first time. The NCCN landbird monitoring protocol requires annual survey effort consisting of an annual panel (34 transects) plus one of five alternating panels (an additional 34 transects) in the large parks—Mount Rainier National Park (MORA), North Cascades National Park Service Complex (NOCA), or Olympic National Park (OLYM)—and the completion of a grid of survey points at either of the smaller parks—San Juan Island National Historical Park (SAJH) or Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI)—which are surveyed in alternating years. We previously surveyed the annual panel of transects in 2005 and 2006, during pilot field seasons devoted to protocol development and testing. We conducted point counts at 881 point count stations arrayed along 65 transects in the three large parks in 2007. Three intended transects could not be surveyed because of unusually rainy conditions near the end of the field season. We detected 122 bird species in the three large parks, and recorded 86 of them during one or more point counts. For 57 species (all species detected at least 9 times on annual-panel transects between 2005 and 2007), we present the total number of detections on annual-panel transects in each park during the 2005, 2006 and 2007 field seasons. We caution, however, that these detection totals have not been adjusted for differences in survey effort or potential differences in detectability of birds between years; such adjustments will be made in conjunction with trend analyses in our five-year reports. At SAJH, we conducted 54 point counts, comprising our entire survey grid. We detected 60 species during those point counts. We present the number of detections, and the number of points with detections, for each species detected during point counts at SAJH. We conclude that the NCCN landbird monitoring program is off to an excellent start, with a comprehensive, field-tested protocol, two years of annual-panel data collected during the protocol development phase (2005 and 2006), and now a year of full project implementation, including data collection on the annual panel as well as the first alternating panel. All of our procedures for season preparation, data collection, data management, data analysis, and reporting appear to be working well.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Siegel, Rodney; Wilkerson, Robert; Kuntz, Robert
- Date of Issue
- 2008-03
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Program Center
- Units
- MORA , NOCA , NRSS , OLYM , SAJH
- Keywords
- Abundance, alternating panel, annual panel, annual report, Avian, Biodiversity, Biology, Bird, Density Estimation, Detectability, Distribution, landbird monitoring, Monitoring, Mount Rainier National Park, NCCN, North Cascades National Park Service Complex, North Coast and Cascades Network, Observation, Olympic National Park, Point Count, Presence, San Juan Islands National Historical Park, Taxa Links To Datasets, Transect