In its initial phase, GBBO's Nevada Bird
Count primarily addresses monitoring needs for birds
who breed in Nevada's terrestrial habitats. The majority
of these are neotropical migratory landbirds whose nesting
period takes place between May and July. For this group,
we chose a habitat-specific, fixed-radius point count
survey design, meaning that each point count transect
is set within just one habitat type, and only bird sightings
made within 100 m of the surveyor are typically used
for analyses.
Our program involves two approaches to data collection:
random point monitoring and project-related monitoring.
Random point monitoring ensures that bird population
status and trends can be assessed without including
biases that may be inadvertently introduced from established
projects. For instance, established conservation/restoration/management
projects are often located in areas that have already
been recognized as threatened or sensitive with regard
to their biological resources. Using only data from
such locations could lead to a skewed representation
of the status and trend of a given bird species, or
a given bird community, across the state.
On the other hand, using only random sampling locations
would reduce the immediate applicability of the data
set for specific questions that a resource manager of
a specific project area may ask, for example "how
intact/unique is the bird community of a stretch of
the Virgin River compared to bird communities found
in other Mojave desert riparian areas?"
Therefore, our program offers to integrate both sources
of data in one program that provides for a shared survey
protocol and immediate compatibility among data included
in the network. A project manager who is a partner in
this network can address his/her research question by
accessing data from the same habitat type across the
state. With this capability, resource managers will
be given unprecedented scientific power for statements
about birds in their Nevada project area, because their
data can always be presented within a matrix of compatible,
statistically powerful data from similar areas across
the state.
Contact
to find out more about becoming a sponsor/partner of
GBBO's Nevada Bird Count.
