GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project: The 1999 Season

Overview: GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project. 1. Following initial independent work by M. L. Cody and 3y funding from NPS, we have instigated a scheme for long-term monitoring of breeding land bird populations in a wide variety of habitats representative of the northern Rockies and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Census sites are located almost entirely within Grand Teton National Park, where a broad range of representative vegetation types is accessible within close geographic proximity. 2. Some 30 monitoring sites are established within and adjacent to the park in pristine habitat. Sites range from the Jackson Hole lowlands to subalpine and alpine sites, from meadow, sagebrush and marshland, through willow scrub, cottonwood and aspen woodlands, to lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests. Some sites have a monitoring history of > 30 y; others were established in the mid-1990's. 3. The location and accessibility of the study sites permits all to be regularly and repeatedly censused during the short (6-week) breeding season. Census sites are standardized in area (5-10 ha in size) and mapped in detail (topographic features, vegetation). Census schedules, turung, and methodological protocols will be established and maintained, providing for strictly controlled inter-site and inter-year comparisons in breeding bird populations, species composition, and densities. 4. To evaluate the local versus more regional nature of inter-year variation in bird densities, one widespread habitat (willows) is replicated and censused at locations outside GTNP, in the northern Rockies (Glacier National Park) and central Rockies (Rocky Mountain National Park). 5. The project entails only modest costs (e.g. for transportation), but the projected benefits to science, specifically to resource management, will continue to accumulate as the data base is expanded in future years. As no comparable data base or monitoring scheme exists for the region, the value of the GTNP is apparent, and ensuring its continuance is of critical importance.

Download Full-text

Grand Teton National Park Breeding Bird Monitoring Project

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2000.3407 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 23-30

Author(s):

Martin Cody

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Area 5 ◽

Bird Monitoring ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

Study Sites ◽

Land Bird ◽

Independent Work

Overview: GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project. 1. Following initial independent work by M. L. Cody and 3y funding from NPS, we instigated a scheme for long-term monitoring of breeding land bird populations in a wide variety of habitats representative of the northern Rockies and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Census sites are located almost entirely within Grand Teton National Park, where a broad range of representative vegetation types is accessible within close geographic proximity. 2. 30 monitoring sites are established within and adjacent to the park in pristine habitat. Sites range from the Jackson Hole lowlands to subalpine and alpine sites, from meadow, sagebrush and marshland, through willow scrub, cottonwood and aspen woodlands, to lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests. Some sites have a monitoring history of >30 y; others were established in the mid-1990's. 3. The location and accessibility of the study sites permits all to be regularly and repeatedly censused during the short (6-week) breeding season. Census sites are standardized in area (5-10 ha in size) and mapped in detail (topographic features, vegetation). Census schedules, timing, and methodological protocols are established, and allow for controlled inter-site and inter-year comparisons in breeding bird populations, species composition, and densities.

Download Full-text

GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project 2001 Season

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2001.3449 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 25 ◽

pp. 31-43

Author(s):

M. Cody

Keyword(s):

Breeding Bird ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Topographic Features ◽

Area 5 ◽

Bird Monitoring ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

History Of ◽

Study Sites ◽

Land Bird ◽

Independent Work

Overview: GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project: 1. Following initial independent work by M. L. Cody and by funding from NPS, we instigated a scheme for long-term monitoring of breeding land bird populations in a wide variety of habitats representative of the northern Rockies and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Census sites are located almost entirely within Grand Teton National Park, where a broad range of representative vegetation types is accessible within close geographic proximity. 2. 30 monitoring sites are established within and adjacent to the park in pristine habitat. Sites range from the Jackson Hole lowlands to subalpine and alpine sites, from meadow, sagebrush and marshland, through willow scrub, cottonwood and aspen woodlands, to lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests. Some sites have a monitoring history of >30y; others were established in the mid-1990's. 3. The location and accessibility of the study sites permits all to be regularly and repeatedly censused during the short (6-week) breeding season. Census sites are standardized in area ( 5- 10 ha in size) and mapped in detail (topographic features, vegetation). Census schedules, timing, and methodological protocols are established, and allow for controlled inter-site and inter-year comparisons in breeding bird populations, species composition, and densities.

Download Full-text

Monitoring Migratory Bird Populations in Grand Teton National Park, Northern Rocky Mountains

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.1993.3141 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 17 ◽

pp. 55-67

Author(s):

Martin Cody ◽

Steven Cain

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Migratory Bird ◽

Routine Activity ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Monitoring Scheme ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

Study Sites ◽

Land Bird

A scheme for long-term monitoring of breeding land bird populations in a wide variety of habitats representative of the northern Rockies and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) was initiated in summer 1993. It is projected that the monitoring scheme, when fully established and formalized, will become a routine activity in Grand Teton National Park, where a broad range of representative vegetation types is accessible within close geographic proximity. Sixteen study sites were established within the park in pristine habitat, from the Jackson Hole lowlands to subalpine and alpine sites, from meadow, sagebrush and marshland, through willow scrub, cottonwood and aspen woodlands, to lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests. Some of the study sites have a long history of research on the breeding birds (see below). Census sites are standardized at 5 ha in size, and mapped in detail (topography, vegetation). The locations and accessibility of the study sites permit all to be regularly and repeatedly censused during the short (6-week) breeding season. Census schedules, timing, and methodological protocols are being established and refined, to provide for strictly controlled inter-site and inter-year comparisons in breeding bird populations, species composition, and densities. In view of the projected benefits to science and resource management of this monitoring scheme, the project hopefully will be continued and the data base further expanded in future years, with a larger range of study sites (24-36).

Download Full-text

GTNP Breeding Bird Monitoring Project

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2002.3491 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

pp. 13-20

Author(s):

M. Cody

Keyword(s):

Breeding Bird ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Topographic Features ◽

Area 5 ◽

Bird Monitoring ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

History Of ◽

Study Sites ◽

Land Bird ◽

Independent Work

Download Full-text

Breeding Bird Popluations in Grand Teton National Park: Density and Distribution

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.1995.3233 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 19 ◽

pp. 19-23

Author(s):

Martin Cody

Keyword(s):

Data Base ◽

National Park ◽

Monitoring Program ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Bird Monitoring ◽

Census Techniques ◽

Monitoring Protocols ◽

Changes Over Time

GTNP (Grand Teton National Park) recently initiated a breeding bird monitoring program, with a view toward assessing population densities of breeding birds and their potential changes, both of residents and neotropical migrants; the 1995 season was the first in which the monitoring protocols of the program were fully instigated. The program goals are the monitoring of both species and densities over a broad range of habitats within the park, with a view to detecting changes over time in these variables, in year-to-year "background" variation and in possible long-term trends. Site selection, mapping and marking, and deployment of various bird census techniques, will be completed and refined over three introductory years, 1995-1997. Thence, it is anticipated that the monitoring program will become permanently established, contributing yearly to an expanding data base on the park's breeding bird populations. This data base, it is believed, will become a useful backup and basis for management decisions, and an increasingly sensitive index from which changes in the park's avifauna, natural or anthropogenic, can be calibrated.

Download Full-text

Monitoring Breeding Bird Populations in Grand Teton National Park

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.1996.3273 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 35-38

Author(s):

Martin Cody

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Information Source ◽

Monitoring Program ◽

Bird Species ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Subalpine Fir ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Breeding Populations ◽

Jackson Hole

This report covers year 2 of a three year project, 1995-1997 inclusive, to instigate a permanent program of monitoring landbird species composition and densities in a variety of representative habitats within Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). Habitats range from grassland and sagebrush on the valley floor of Jackson Hole (around 1900 m) through a range of scrub, woodland, and tall foothill forest vegetation types to montane sites of subalpine fir and tundra (ca. 3000 m). The monitoring program is intended to provide data on year-to-year fluctuations in breeding bird species and densities, and document longer-term changes (if any) in the local avifauna of resident and migratory species. The data base will document variability in size of breeding populations among years, local shifts in distribution and abundance over habitat types, and potentially form an information source on which management and conservation decisions might be based.

Download Full-text

Monitoring Breeding Bird Populations in Grand Teton National Park

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.1994.3187 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 18 ◽

pp. 42-45

Author(s):

Martin Cody

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Monitoring Program ◽

Bird Species ◽

Migratory Species ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Subalpine Fir ◽

Bird Populations ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

Management And Conservation

The central aim of this project is to instigate a permanent program of monitoring landbird species composition and densities in a variety of representative habitats within Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). Habitats range from grassland and sagebrush on the valley floor of Jackson Hole (around 1900 m) through a range of scrub, woodland, and tall foothill forest vegetation types to montane sites of subalpine fir and tundra (ca. 3000 m). The monitoring program will provide data on year-to-year fluctuations in breeding bird species and densities, and eventually on any longer-term changes in the local avifauna, of both resident and migratory species; the data base will further understanding of population variability, local shifts in distribution and abundance, and potentially form a source for management and conservation decisions.

Download Full-text

Wildscapes, Dudescapes, and the Dude Ranching Aesthetic: Grand Teton National Park 1908-1940

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.2004.3573 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 28 ◽

pp. 48-52

Author(s):

Amanda Rees

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

American West ◽

Cultural Landscapes ◽

Rocky Mountain ◽

Cultural Resources ◽

Unique Contribution ◽

The West ◽

Grand Teton National Park ◽

Jackson Hole ◽

To Receive

"Dude Ranch" is not an expression that carries a clear-cut meaning to everyone, for a dude ranch is neither a summer hotel nor a farm where dudes "ranch". . .. The most typical dude ranches of all the West are in this section of Wyoming. They range all the way from the most exclusive outfits that require references and advance reservations for not les than three weeks or a month at around $70 per week per person-including saddle horse and equipment, modern cabin, meals and other advantages-to the guest ranches or outfitters where accommodation may be had by the day, week or season. The person of moderate means can arrange his vacation in Jackson Hole to fit his purse. (Jackson Hole: Where to Go and What To See, published between 1929-1950) The American West is home to one of the most distinctive agricultural tourism activities in the world: dude ranching (Rees 2004). Dude ranching is the "single most unique contribution of the Rocky Mountain West to the ever-growing national vacation industry" (Roundy 1973), and it has been crucial in shaping the ways in which the West is perceived, working to effect continuing romantic notions of the American West (Rodnitzky, 1968). Though dude ranches can be found in the East (Zimmerman 1998), the South, the Southwest, California, Hawaii, and the Northwest, it is the Northern Rocky Mountain region, especially Montana and Wyoming, which forms the nucleus of dude ranch tourism (Rees 2005). However, unlike cattle ranching, agriculture, and mineral extraction, tourism has rarely received the attention it deserves in Wyoming, though it continues to be an important part of the Western image, as well as an important factor in the production and reproduction of that image. Just as dude ranching has failed to receive the attention it deserves in the state, it has also failed to receive that attention in one of the region's densest nexus or collection of dude ranching, Jackson Hole, and in particular, Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). Indeed, dude ranches have faired miserably in the first seventy-five years of the park's existence. As cultural landscapes dude ranches have been deÂemphasized in favor of celebrating the natural environment. This project's research has revealed that a vast majority of the thirty-three dude ranches that once functioned in what is now GTNP have disappeared, been auctioned off, burned, pulled down, or allowed to rot in situ. In the last decade, critics of federal cultural resource management philosophy sought to reject this often-fragmented approach to cultural heritage protection, and looked to embrace environmental and cultural resources as an indivisible whole (Hufford 1994) and this research project falls within that effort to produce a narrative that embraces both environmental and cultural resources to tell a story of the ways in which humans and nature have interacted through tourism in GTNP.

Download Full-text

Community Structure and Functional Role of Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) in Treeline Communities in Rocky Mountain National Park

Forests ◽

10.3390/f11080838 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (8) ◽

pp. 838

Author(s):

Laurel A. Sindewald ◽

Diana F. Tomback ◽

Eric R. Neumeyer

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Functional Role ◽

Rocky Mountain ◽

Rocky Mountain National Park ◽

Tree Islands ◽

Pinus Flexilis ◽

Tree Island ◽

Limber Pine ◽

Study Sites

Research Highlights: Limber pine (Pinus flexilis) is abundant in some alpine treeline ecotone (ATE) communities east of the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) and the Colorado Front Range. Limber pine may be able to colonize the ATE under changing climate aided by directed seed dispersal by Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). Cronartium ribicola, white pine blister rust, is a growing threat to limber pine and may affect its functional role within the ATE. Background and Objectives: The ATE is sensitive, worldwide, to increasing temperature. However, the predicted advance of treeline under a changing climate may be modified by tree species composition and interactions. We aimed to (1) examine the conifer species composition and relative abundances in treeline communities with limber pine; (2) assess which functional roles limber pine assumes in these communities—tree island initiator, tree island component, and/or solitary tree; and (3) determine whether limber pine’s occurrence as a tree island initiator can be predicted by its relative abundance as a solitary tree. Materials and Methods: We selected four study sites in RMNP above subalpine forest limber pine stands. We sampled the nearest tree island to each of forty random points in each study site as well as solitary tree plots. Results: Across study sites, limber pine comprised, on average, 76% of solitary trees and was significantly more abundant as a solitary tree than Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) or subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Limber pine was a frequent component of multi-tree islands in three study sites, the major component in one study site, and dominated single-tree islands at two study sites. At three of four study sites, no species had significantly greater odds of being a tree island initiator. Limber pine was found less often as a tree island initiator than predicted from its relative abundance as a solitary tree, given the likely role of solitary trees in tree island formation.

Download Full-text

Bird interactions with drones, from individuals to large colonies

10.1101/109926 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mitchell Lyons ◽

Kate Brandis ◽

Corey Callaghan ◽

Justin McCann ◽

Charlotte Mills ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Bird Species ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Breeding Birds ◽

Future Research ◽

Natural Environments ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Bird Monitoring ◽

Commercial Applications ◽

Study Sites ◽

Bird Colonies

AbstractDrones are rapidly becoming a key part of the toolkit for a range of scientific disciplines, as well as a range of management and commercial applications. This presents a number of challenges in context of how drone use might impact nearby wildlife. Interactions between birds and drones naturally come to mind, since they share the airspace. This paper details initial findings on the interactions between drones and birds for a range of waterbird, passerine and raptor species, across of a range of scientific applications and natural environments. The primary aims of this paper are to provide guidance for those planning or undertaking drone monitoring exercises, as well as provide direction for future research into safe and effective monitoring with drones. Our study sites we all located within Australia and spanned a range of arid, semi-arid, dunefield, floodplain, wetland, woodland, forest, coastal heath and urban environments. We particularly focus on behavioral changes towards drones during breeding season, interactions with raptors, and effects on nesting birds in large colonies – three areas yet to be explored in published literature. In over 70 hours of flight, there were no incidents with birds. Although some aggressive behavior was encountered from solitary breeding birds. Several large breeding bird colonies were surveyed, and included in our observations is monitoring and counting of nests in a colony of over 200,000 Straw-necked Ibis, the largest drone-based bird monitoring exercise to date. In addition to providing observations of interactions with specific bird species, we recommend procedures for flight planning, safe flying and avoidance. This paper also provides a basis for a number of critical and emerging areas of research into bird-drone interactions, most notably, territorial breeding birds, safety around large raptors, and the effect of drones on the behaviour of birds in large breeding colonies.

Download Full-text