1 00:00:09,210 --> 00:00:11,290 - [Moderator] Aaron weed's presentation. 2 00:00:11,290 --> 00:00:15,120 He a program manager of the Northeast Temperate Inventory 3 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:18,820 and Monitoring Program with the National Park Service. 4 00:00:18,820 --> 00:00:21,850 He will be presenting today about community trends 5 00:00:21,850 --> 00:00:23,520 in forest bird abundance within 6 00:00:23,520 --> 00:00:26,050 northeastern national parks - [Aaron] Yeah thanks so much. 7 00:00:26,050 --> 00:00:27,530 Thanks for the introduction and everybody 8 00:00:27,530 --> 00:00:30,950 for sticking around today and joining us today. 9 00:00:30,950 --> 00:00:34,390 So I'm gonna, as a title talks about, mentions. 10 00:00:34,390 --> 00:00:37,730 I wanna talk about birds and I'm not gonna spend a ton 11 00:00:37,730 --> 00:00:42,610 of time talking about sort of the nature of our program 12 00:00:42,610 --> 00:00:44,900 because Kate Miller in the plenary yesterday 13 00:00:44,900 --> 00:00:47,070 did an excellent job of giving an overview 14 00:00:48,010 --> 00:00:50,130 of the monitoring that we do and why we do it 15 00:00:50,130 --> 00:00:52,140 and particularly focused a lot 16 00:00:52,140 --> 00:00:55,500 on summarizing some of the trends in forest health 17 00:00:55,500 --> 00:00:57,590 which are obviously directly relevant 18 00:00:57,590 --> 00:00:59,540 to the discussion I'm gonna have today. 19 00:01:01,166 --> 00:01:01,999 So, today I'm gonna talk 20 00:01:01,999 --> 00:01:04,070 about a program that really is a compliment 21 00:01:04,070 --> 00:01:06,970 in many ways to the forest health monitoring 22 00:01:06,970 --> 00:01:09,890 and I also sort of provide sort of a couple 23 00:01:09,890 --> 00:01:11,580 of disclaimers here that have a lot 24 00:01:11,580 --> 00:01:13,570 of information to talk about 25 00:01:13,570 --> 00:01:15,400 and so it would be hard to maybe go 26 00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:18,550 into super amount of detail 27 00:01:18,550 --> 00:01:21,180 but I'll be happy to answer as many questions as possible 28 00:01:21,180 --> 00:01:23,400 but the goal here is just to provide a kind 29 00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:25,250 of an overview at the community level. 30 00:01:25,250 --> 00:01:26,083 I'm actually gonna shut 31 00:01:26,083 --> 00:01:30,050 off my video in case that causes any interruptions too. 32 00:01:30,050 --> 00:01:31,150 Okay, 33 00:01:31,150 --> 00:01:31,983 so, 34 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:37,830 as Kate mentioned yesterday in the plenary, very nicely 35 00:01:37,830 --> 00:01:41,680 our parks in the northeast are pretty unique 36 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:44,620 in terms of forest structure and because 37 00:01:44,620 --> 00:01:48,810 of the protection that they have through the park service. 38 00:01:48,810 --> 00:01:52,650 However, we do have some key forest health issues such 39 00:01:52,650 --> 00:01:56,770 as invasive plants and pests, deer overabundance and 40 00:01:56,770 --> 00:02:00,580 lacking regeneration in a few parks 41 00:02:00,580 --> 00:02:04,200 and so in addition to understanding forest monitoring 42 00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:05,293 and sort of those, 43 00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:08,930 effects in the vegetation community, we have 44 00:02:08,930 --> 00:02:10,120 another program looking 45 00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:13,530 at landbird breeding birds within these forests 46 00:02:13,530 --> 00:02:15,240 so that we can get another dimension 47 00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:17,360 of what is going on in these forests 48 00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:19,330 and then so ultimately 49 00:02:19,330 --> 00:02:21,250 that we can begin connecting the dots 50 00:02:21,250 --> 00:02:23,210 so to speak of how some of these trends 51 00:02:23,210 --> 00:02:25,900 and forest health may be influencing other levels 52 00:02:25,900 --> 00:02:27,570 of organizations such as birds 53 00:02:29,390 --> 00:02:31,730 and so our landbird monitoring program 54 00:02:31,730 --> 00:02:33,480 which has been presented a little bit 55 00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:34,620 in the past few years 56 00:02:34,620 --> 00:02:37,940 in this conference was 57 00:02:39,620 --> 00:02:40,830 initiated back in 58 00:02:40,830 --> 00:02:43,530 around 2005 or 2006, with the help 59 00:02:43,530 --> 00:02:47,137 of Steve Faccio at Vermont Center of Ecostudies 60 00:02:47,137 --> 00:02:49,840 and so Steve, this is before my time 61 00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:52,220 but Steve helped develop the protocol 62 00:02:52,220 --> 00:02:55,710 within these parks that are depicted in the screen here 63 00:02:55,710 --> 00:02:58,730 but what I wanna just give a basic update and sort 64 00:02:58,730 --> 00:03:00,557 of a background of what that protocol is, 65 00:03:00,557 --> 00:03:02,380 and then I'm gonna sort of go right 66 00:03:02,380 --> 00:03:04,103 into some of the trend results. 67 00:03:05,810 --> 00:03:08,770 So in general, the objectives of the program are 68 00:03:08,770 --> 00:03:11,050 to evaluate trends and abundance of species breeding 69 00:03:11,050 --> 00:03:13,630 in our park, forest and grasslands. 70 00:03:13,630 --> 00:03:15,320 Today, I'm gonna specifically focus 71 00:03:15,320 --> 00:03:16,960 on the forest level monitoring, 72 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:18,600 but we do have a few routes in a couple 73 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:21,290 of parks that are specific to grasslands 74 00:03:21,290 --> 00:03:23,360 some secondary objectives of this program. 75 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:25,970 We're also sort of trying to evaluate what we're finding 76 00:03:25,970 --> 00:03:28,960 in the forest and how that's influencing the birds as well 77 00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:32,250 and I'll talk a little bit about how we evaluated that 78 00:03:32,250 --> 00:03:33,493 in our analysis, 79 00:03:34,460 --> 00:03:37,780 and our sampling design is a pretty common point count. 80 00:03:37,780 --> 00:03:42,400 It's a 10 minute point count variable radius where 81 00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:45,500 we have a number of permanent sites across our parks. 82 00:03:45,500 --> 00:03:47,470 The number of the sites that we have in each 83 00:03:47,470 --> 00:03:50,880 of our parks is proportional to the forest area. 84 00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:55,200 All of our sites are separated by, roughly 250 meters 85 00:03:55,200 --> 00:03:57,920 and across the entire network of parks, we have just 86 00:03:57,920 --> 00:04:02,100 under 250 permanent point count stations that have 87 00:04:02,100 --> 00:04:06,360 been monitored annually since roughly 2006 or 2007, 88 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:09,080 depending on the park 89 00:04:09,080 --> 00:04:11,260 and for the most part these sites are, 90 00:04:11,260 --> 00:04:13,860 we try to get them visited at least once a year 91 00:04:13,860 --> 00:04:16,650 and some of them actually have repeat visits 92 00:04:16,650 --> 00:04:20,490 and at each of the points, of course observers are recording 93 00:04:20,490 --> 00:04:22,320 the number of birds that they've heard 94 00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:23,940 or that they have seen 95 00:04:23,940 --> 00:04:27,090 within approximate distance bans from them, as well 96 00:04:27,090 --> 00:04:30,772 as recording when during the 10 point count 97 00:04:30,772 --> 00:04:33,760 they've encountered the individuals 98 00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:36,460 and that's important in sort of assessing 99 00:04:36,460 --> 00:04:39,190 the detection component when estimating abundance 100 00:04:39,190 --> 00:04:41,340 which I'll talk about in just a little bit. 101 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:43,480 Other thing that's important to know 102 00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:46,210 about this program is that that each 103 00:04:46,210 --> 00:04:49,240 of our longterm bird monitoring points is co-located 104 00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:50,680 with the forest monitoring plot 105 00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:54,340 which we'll take advantage of in the coming analysis 106 00:04:55,320 --> 00:04:56,923 and the last point that I'll make is 107 00:04:56,923 --> 00:05:00,300 that this is a volunteer based data collection program 108 00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:03,030 and so of the 70 or so names that you've see here 109 00:05:03,030 --> 00:05:06,360 these are all folks that have contributed in some fashion 110 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:10,240 over the last 15 or so years to collecting bird data for us 111 00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:13,370 and without this great effort and dedication 112 00:05:13,370 --> 00:05:16,050 in many ways of these folks, we wouldn't be able to do this. 113 00:05:16,050 --> 00:05:19,660 I also, a major sort of shout out to Steve Faccio 114 00:05:19,660 --> 00:05:23,430 who from the beginning has pulled this program together 115 00:05:23,430 --> 00:05:25,810 and helped sort of maintain it at least 116 00:05:25,810 --> 00:05:28,510 for the first 13 to 14 years of it 117 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:31,610 and so one thing that I do wanna mention is 118 00:05:31,610 --> 00:05:33,980 that this has been a really ingrained engagement piece 119 00:05:33,980 --> 00:05:35,800 for our parks. 120 00:05:35,800 --> 00:05:38,420 We have professional birders perhaps, some of them 121 00:05:38,420 --> 00:05:41,400 you might know their names that are listed here 122 00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:43,310 but these sort of very 123 00:05:43,310 --> 00:05:46,090 in terms of being trained 124 00:05:46,090 --> 00:05:48,090 to more or less professional birders 125 00:05:48,090 --> 00:05:49,217 that are within our parks 126 00:05:49,217 --> 00:05:50,277 and so I just wanted to say 127 00:05:50,277 --> 00:05:52,210 thank you for all of that commitment 128 00:05:52,210 --> 00:05:54,460 and we encourage you guys to keep coming back 129 00:05:54,460 --> 00:05:57,323 because this has really been a real fun program for us. 130 00:05:58,700 --> 00:06:01,260 Okay so now turning to certain sort 131 00:06:01,260 --> 00:06:04,810 of the specific analysis questions that we had 132 00:06:05,660 --> 00:06:08,470 we're basically looking, this program is as a part 133 00:06:08,470 --> 00:06:13,100 of the inventory monitoring program is we're sort of 134 00:06:13,100 --> 00:06:14,650 as any of these programs are 135 00:06:14,650 --> 00:06:16,610 we're required to do trend analysis 136 00:06:16,610 --> 00:06:18,550 and so not only so 137 00:06:18,550 --> 00:06:20,930 that we can understand what's going on with these resources 138 00:06:20,930 --> 00:06:23,940 but those provide us obviously scientific evidence to know 139 00:06:23,940 --> 00:06:26,660 whether or not we're meeting our protocol objectives 140 00:06:26,660 --> 00:06:30,760 and so that's really sort of the context of this analysis. 141 00:06:30,760 --> 00:06:33,880 We looked at, what are the trends in forest bird richness 142 00:06:33,880 --> 00:06:36,590 and abundance at the park and network scale 143 00:06:36,590 --> 00:06:38,160 and then looking at the effects 144 00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:41,580 of local forest structure on bird abundance and 145 00:06:42,439 --> 00:06:44,660 on this paper, we had a number 146 00:06:44,660 --> 00:06:47,380 of really great colleagues from Michigan State University. 147 00:06:47,380 --> 00:06:49,570 I worked with Andy Finley there, 148 00:06:49,570 --> 00:06:51,470 one of his PhD students approached me 149 00:06:51,470 --> 00:06:53,870 about developing this model so 150 00:06:53,870 --> 00:06:57,730 that he could to analyze these data. 151 00:06:57,730 --> 00:06:59,080 So Kate Miller and myself 152 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:02,720 and these folks are on this collaborative project together 153 00:07:03,730 --> 00:07:04,563 and I should mention 154 00:07:04,563 --> 00:07:07,370 that this is the lion's share of Jeff's sort of work 155 00:07:08,350 --> 00:07:10,760 and these guys are the real math geniuses 156 00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:12,650 behind a lot of this. 157 00:07:12,650 --> 00:07:14,470 So I don't have a lot of time to go 158 00:07:14,470 --> 00:07:16,820 into specifics about sort of the details of the model 159 00:07:16,820 --> 00:07:20,500 am happy to address questions if people have those 160 00:07:20,500 --> 00:07:23,460 but for those folks that are familiar with working 161 00:07:23,460 --> 00:07:26,640 with bird point count data or any wildlife datas such 162 00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:29,810 as the prior presentation, 163 00:07:29,810 --> 00:07:32,060 these can be challenging data to analyze, and 164 00:07:32,060 --> 00:07:36,700 they sometimes take challenging models to actually fit 165 00:07:36,700 --> 00:07:39,040 but because we were interested in sort of looking 166 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:43,670 at the effects of estimating trends in bird abundance 167 00:07:43,670 --> 00:07:46,600 and looking at different scales, we brought in sort 168 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:50,560 of a multi-level or a hierarchical model that looks 169 00:07:50,560 --> 00:07:53,400 that model is essentially the species 170 00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:56,610 as a community and also at different regions. 171 00:07:56,610 --> 00:07:58,190 One of the things that was probably 172 00:07:58,190 --> 00:08:00,380 I hope apparent in Kate's talk yesterday is 173 00:08:00,380 --> 00:08:02,400 that our parks are very different, 174 00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:03,750 in terms of forest structure 175 00:08:03,750 --> 00:08:08,227 and so this model provides us abilities to evaluate that. 176 00:08:08,227 --> 00:08:11,510 The other thing that it does is it's modeling it 177 00:08:11,510 --> 00:08:12,343 as a community 178 00:08:12,343 --> 00:08:15,230 and the benefit of that is that it's sharing information 179 00:08:15,230 --> 00:08:19,060 across species in terms of their detection probability 180 00:08:19,060 --> 00:08:22,480 and for us, that allows us to get better inference 181 00:08:22,480 --> 00:08:25,090 on species that are rarely detected 182 00:08:25,090 --> 00:08:27,840 or parks that are sparsely sampled 183 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:30,220 and so if you look at sort of this table, you can see 184 00:08:30,220 --> 00:08:32,330 that we have a couple of parks, like Weir Farm 185 00:08:32,330 --> 00:08:35,470 which is near the New York border 186 00:08:35,470 --> 00:08:37,510 in Connecticut only has five sites in it. 187 00:08:37,510 --> 00:08:39,410 Saint-Gaudens in Cornish New Hampshire 188 00:08:39,410 --> 00:08:41,130 only around roughly eight. 189 00:08:41,130 --> 00:08:44,220 So this model sort of brings in sort 190 00:08:44,220 --> 00:08:46,610 of an allows us to provide that estimation 191 00:08:46,610 --> 00:08:49,773 across those different scales and areas and species. 192 00:08:51,060 --> 00:08:54,830 So in addition to understanding and estimating the abundance 193 00:08:54,830 --> 00:08:57,900 of species and the trend in those species 194 00:08:57,900 --> 00:09:00,790 this also does have this model does account 195 00:09:00,790 --> 00:09:03,300 for imperfect detection, sort of following kind 196 00:09:03,300 --> 00:09:06,870 of a classic removal monitoring protocol using 197 00:09:06,870 --> 00:09:08,920 the time period of first observation. 198 00:09:08,920 --> 00:09:10,090 So that's where sort of 199 00:09:10,090 --> 00:09:14,320 the countdown information comes into the point count. 200 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:17,660 We also evaluated, within the detection covariates looking 201 00:09:17,660 --> 00:09:18,930 at time since sunrise 202 00:09:18,930 --> 00:09:20,580 of the counts and the day of year 203 00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,070 some of this might be all very common to many 204 00:09:24,070 --> 00:09:26,320 of you may, maybe not, again, I'm happy to, 205 00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:29,070 answer more questions if there are interests. 206 00:09:29,070 --> 00:09:31,240 Another noble aspect of this model is 207 00:09:31,240 --> 00:09:35,250 that in addition to sort of the detection components 208 00:09:35,250 --> 00:09:37,300 we've actually looked at the effects 209 00:09:37,300 --> 00:09:40,000 of local forest structure on forest bird abundance 210 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:43,510 at the site level, we use three covariates in the model. 211 00:09:43,510 --> 00:09:45,650 One of them was percent forest cover 212 00:09:45,650 --> 00:09:48,510 from a national land cover data base 213 00:09:48,510 --> 00:09:51,810 of within one kilometer of the site. 214 00:09:51,810 --> 00:09:54,360 We also were able to use Kate's the long-term 215 00:09:54,360 --> 00:09:58,650 monitoring plots to estimate the total regeneration density 216 00:09:58,650 --> 00:10:01,040 at the site and also the basal area 217 00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:02,890 and unfortunately, I don't have the time to go 218 00:10:02,890 --> 00:10:03,723 in sort of all 219 00:10:03,723 --> 00:10:06,820 of the details of those local forest structure covariates 220 00:10:06,820 --> 00:10:08,670 but if anybody has any specific questions 221 00:10:08,670 --> 00:10:11,280 I have a slide that I can kind of review over 222 00:10:11,280 --> 00:10:13,830 if folks are interested in that, but I'm really gonna stick 223 00:10:13,830 --> 00:10:15,110 to some of the big patterns 224 00:10:15,110 --> 00:10:18,920 and trends that we're seeing across the network. 225 00:10:18,920 --> 00:10:22,330 Okay so just to kind of walk through those trends well 226 00:10:22,330 --> 00:10:23,480 in the results right now. 227 00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:25,140 So just to give you a sense 228 00:10:25,140 --> 00:10:28,210 of these are the number of observed species that we've seen 229 00:10:28,210 --> 00:10:31,790 across the parks over time, across all of the years. 230 00:10:31,790 --> 00:10:34,640 So across the network, we're seeing, oops 231 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:36,700 we were seeing a hundred 232 00:10:36,700 --> 00:10:39,330 and this model is estimating abundance 233 00:10:39,330 --> 00:10:44,330 of 106 species with Saratoga, Stillwater New York 234 00:10:44,560 --> 00:10:47,760 and Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor Maine bringing 235 00:10:47,760 --> 00:10:50,080 in roughly around 70 species 236 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:54,220 and then fewer species in some of our smaller sample parks. 237 00:10:54,220 --> 00:10:56,130 What's important to note here is that these aren't all 238 00:10:56,130 --> 00:10:58,770 of the bird species that are using these parks. 239 00:10:58,770 --> 00:11:00,980 These are the ones that are being detected 240 00:11:00,980 --> 00:11:04,640 and primarily within 50 meters of the observer 241 00:11:04,640 --> 00:11:07,030 and thought to be breeding within the parks 242 00:11:07,030 --> 00:11:10,170 during sort of that specific pre peak breeding period 243 00:11:12,790 --> 00:11:14,270 and so to talk a little bit 244 00:11:14,270 --> 00:11:15,630 about some of the trend estimates 245 00:11:15,630 --> 00:11:17,830 so I just wanna walk you through this figure. 246 00:11:17,830 --> 00:11:20,670 So basically, as he said, this is a hierarchical model. 247 00:11:20,670 --> 00:11:23,215 So it allows us to estimate what's going on 248 00:11:23,215 --> 00:11:25,230 at the network level all the way 249 00:11:25,230 --> 00:11:27,320 down to the park and species level 250 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:29,650 and so what we're seeing here, basically these numbers 251 00:11:29,650 --> 00:11:33,110 are showing you the quantitative it's the slope estimate 252 00:11:33,110 --> 00:11:37,680 of the changes in abundance of all of the birds over time 253 00:11:37,680 --> 00:11:40,810 and again, does the top is at the network level or NETN 254 00:11:40,810 --> 00:11:43,210 which this white bar basically shows 255 00:11:43,210 --> 00:11:47,610 that the population abundance across all species is stable 256 00:11:47,610 --> 00:11:50,180 but that when we look at the park scale, we have 257 00:11:50,180 --> 00:11:52,420 we see geographical variation 258 00:11:52,420 --> 00:11:54,260 in the directions of the trends. 259 00:11:54,260 --> 00:11:57,190 We have three parks that show us statistical increases 260 00:11:57,190 --> 00:11:59,340 and those were in Roosevelt Vanderbilt 261 00:11:59,340 --> 00:12:00,890 and the Hudson River Valley 262 00:12:00,890 --> 00:12:05,730 and New York Saratoga National Store Park Battlefield 263 00:12:05,730 --> 00:12:06,890 in Stillwater New York 264 00:12:06,890 --> 00:12:10,190 and then Weir Farm, which is in Connecticut 265 00:12:10,190 --> 00:12:12,570 and we have three parks that are showing statistically 266 00:12:12,570 --> 00:12:15,680 significant declines in overall forest bird abundance 267 00:12:15,680 --> 00:12:16,513 and that's in 268 00:12:16,513 --> 00:12:19,340 Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park 269 00:12:19,340 --> 00:12:22,810 in Woodstock Vermont, Acadia national park in Maine 270 00:12:22,810 --> 00:12:25,410 and then Morristown in New Jersey 271 00:12:25,410 --> 00:12:26,360 and then we have two parks 272 00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:28,810 in the middle of there that are basically stable. 273 00:12:30,600 --> 00:12:32,850 I won't have time to go into all of the 274 00:12:32,850 --> 00:12:35,480 sort of the species specific details 275 00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:37,560 but what we're seeing just in general is 276 00:12:37,560 --> 00:12:41,380 that when we are seeing statistically significant declines 277 00:12:41,380 --> 00:12:43,160 in a park, that's actually happening 278 00:12:43,160 --> 00:12:46,709 across the entire community, which is obviously 279 00:12:46,709 --> 00:12:50,990 not great news for some of these parks 280 00:12:50,990 --> 00:12:53,213 and the last point that I'll mention from this analysis is 281 00:12:53,213 --> 00:12:56,390 that the trends in richness are largely mirroring those 282 00:12:56,390 --> 00:12:57,683 in abundance as well. 283 00:12:59,640 --> 00:13:01,290 Another way to look at this data is 284 00:13:01,290 --> 00:13:03,170 if we characterize the trends 285 00:13:03,170 --> 00:13:06,190 of the species within these different guilds 286 00:13:06,190 --> 00:13:08,100 and so what's basically depicted here 287 00:13:08,100 --> 00:13:10,670 in the Y-axis are the guilds and their names 288 00:13:10,670 --> 00:13:13,130 and so these are these functionally similar species 289 00:13:13,130 --> 00:13:15,466 that are grouped by where they forage, 290 00:13:15,466 --> 00:13:18,750 how they eat and where they nest and their origin 291 00:13:18,750 --> 00:13:20,900 whether they're exotic or not 292 00:13:20,900 --> 00:13:23,550 and then what's depicted sort of in the 293 00:13:23,550 --> 00:13:24,760 with the color is, again 294 00:13:24,760 --> 00:13:27,370 is similar to the last slide where the red boxes 295 00:13:27,370 --> 00:13:32,370 are indicating negative or trends in abundance over time 296 00:13:32,490 --> 00:13:35,180 and overall abundance with the guild where 297 00:13:35,180 --> 00:13:38,430 blue is significant increases, excuse me 298 00:13:38,430 --> 00:13:41,270 and the significance of the trend 299 00:13:41,270 --> 00:13:44,820 has being different from zero as denoted by the asterisks. 300 00:13:44,820 --> 00:13:46,680 So what's pretty apparent here is that 301 00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:48,960 we're seeing significant declines where 302 00:13:48,960 --> 00:13:50,550 or changes they're happening 303 00:13:50,550 --> 00:13:52,540 across the entire bird community 304 00:13:53,800 --> 00:13:57,280 which basically I think means is that the entire 305 00:13:57,280 --> 00:14:01,130 the forest condition is having a fairly consistent effect 306 00:14:01,130 --> 00:14:03,053 across the entire bird community. 307 00:14:03,910 --> 00:14:07,250 Even despite seeing the lack of exotic species in some 308 00:14:07,250 --> 00:14:11,770 of these parks where we're seeing declines, there 309 00:14:11,770 --> 00:14:15,530 we're seeing overall more or less a consistent decline 310 00:14:15,530 --> 00:14:17,307 in these forest specialist species 311 00:14:17,307 --> 00:14:19,350 and some of these parks to the left 312 00:14:19,350 --> 00:14:22,500 whereas we're seeing increases over to the right 313 00:14:22,500 --> 00:14:24,130 but what I think is particularly 314 00:14:26,620 --> 00:14:28,890 depressing and I guess I would say is 315 00:14:28,890 --> 00:14:29,910 if we look at these data 316 00:14:29,910 --> 00:14:32,730 in another way, and so a common way to sort of 317 00:14:32,730 --> 00:14:33,960 to summarize 318 00:14:34,890 --> 00:14:37,820 these species data is to basically 319 00:14:37,820 --> 00:14:40,570 calculate what's called a bird community index 320 00:14:40,570 --> 00:14:42,283 and basically what that does is 321 00:14:42,283 --> 00:14:46,090 that a higher bird community index indicates a species 322 00:14:46,090 --> 00:14:49,270 excuse me, an area forest, a site that is represented 323 00:14:49,270 --> 00:14:50,140 by a higher, a 324 00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:55,820 number of special forest bird specialists 325 00:14:55,820 --> 00:14:58,790 whereas a lower bird community index rating 326 00:14:58,790 --> 00:15:00,130 is a bird community 327 00:15:00,130 --> 00:15:04,480 that's has a greater proportion of generalist species 328 00:15:05,480 --> 00:15:07,170 and so if We look at this chart, 329 00:15:07,170 --> 00:15:08,633 basically what we're finding is 330 00:15:08,633 --> 00:15:12,900 that the average site level of BCI or bird community index 331 00:15:12,900 --> 00:15:17,480 again, better higher, more high integrity communities 332 00:15:17,480 --> 00:15:18,820 are over to the right than to the left. 333 00:15:18,820 --> 00:15:21,540 If we look at, if we regress that against 334 00:15:21,540 --> 00:15:25,680 the average trend estimate direction, 335 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:28,180 we basically find that the abundance 336 00:15:28,180 --> 00:15:31,040 of our specialists bird communities, or are 337 00:15:31,040 --> 00:15:34,240 in our parks that are more high integral are 338 00:15:34,240 --> 00:15:36,400 actually declining faster, 339 00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:39,370 which is obviously not what we wanna see. 340 00:15:39,370 --> 00:15:41,230 I think it's suggests, and it's suggesting 341 00:15:41,230 --> 00:15:44,100 that we're obviously seeing our increases in a lot 342 00:15:44,100 --> 00:15:46,780 of these increases are probably happening within some 343 00:15:46,780 --> 00:15:50,580 of these more general species or these forest 344 00:15:50,580 --> 00:15:53,110 that aren't having as high 345 00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:55,950 ecological integrity, excuse me 346 00:15:57,400 --> 00:15:59,990 and so for the last few minutes, I kinda of wanted to turn 347 00:15:59,990 --> 00:16:02,880 to something that's a little bit sort of closer to home 348 00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:06,530 in Vermont here for me and compare some of our results 349 00:16:06,530 --> 00:16:10,380 to the Vermont bird monitoring program 350 00:16:10,380 --> 00:16:13,050 which this publication, many of you might be familiar 351 00:16:13,050 --> 00:16:14,540 with that Steve and his colleagues put 352 00:16:14,540 --> 00:16:15,790 out a couple of years ago 353 00:16:17,736 --> 00:16:20,300 and so what I basically did is I've sort of pulled it. 354 00:16:20,300 --> 00:16:24,580 I'm just wanted to, this is some level of validating some 355 00:16:24,580 --> 00:16:27,390 of the results of our trend analysis to see 356 00:16:27,390 --> 00:16:30,060 whether or not what the consistency is 357 00:16:30,060 --> 00:16:33,030 within the Vermont forest bird monitoring program 358 00:16:33,030 --> 00:16:35,000 which is in the first row here compared 359 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:36,890 to the specific monitoring that we're doing 360 00:16:36,890 --> 00:16:39,020 at Marsh-Billings in Woodstock. 361 00:16:39,020 --> 00:16:41,370 A couple of caveats I should mention upfront here 362 00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:43,210 is obviously the periods 363 00:16:43,210 --> 00:16:47,090 of observation of the trends are different 364 00:16:47,090 --> 00:16:49,750 not exactly the same, but they do overlap 365 00:16:49,750 --> 00:16:52,010 and the other thing to mention here to note is 366 00:16:52,010 --> 00:16:53,770 that Marsh-Billings is actually one 367 00:16:53,770 --> 00:16:55,230 of the sites within this forest 368 00:16:55,230 --> 00:16:57,630 for a monitoring protocol and so, or program. 369 00:16:57,630 --> 00:17:02,160 So there could be some expectation for similarities as well 370 00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:04,540 but the point is, is that Marsh-Billings, 371 00:17:04,540 --> 00:17:08,040 we have 25 sites that we're monitoring there 372 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:10,970 and then there's many hundreds of sites across the state 373 00:17:10,970 --> 00:17:13,560 and I just wanted to do a broad, 374 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:14,900 comparison of that. 375 00:17:14,900 --> 00:17:18,570 So all of the species of the 34 species that Steve 376 00:17:18,570 --> 00:17:21,740 and his colleagues were looking at in that analysis 377 00:17:21,740 --> 00:17:23,960 they basically analyze across the state 378 00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:25,420 of the forest birds and said 379 00:17:25,420 --> 00:17:30,390 that there is 13 of those or 38% of those 34 species 380 00:17:30,390 --> 00:17:33,750 are showing significant statistically significant declines. 381 00:17:33,750 --> 00:17:34,583 Whereas 14 382 00:17:34,583 --> 00:17:37,680 of them are showing statistically significant increases 383 00:17:37,680 --> 00:17:41,040 and then 38% of them are showing no trend. 384 00:17:41,040 --> 00:17:42,640 If we compare that to what we're looking 385 00:17:42,640 --> 00:17:45,290 at in Marsh-Billings, we were only able to look 386 00:17:45,290 --> 00:17:48,204 at 32 species that are comparable between both 387 00:17:48,204 --> 00:17:51,653 of the datasets that were detected in the park. 388 00:17:53,320 --> 00:17:54,550 Basically we're finding 389 00:17:54,550 --> 00:17:57,220 that a lot of the species, there's no trend in abundance 390 00:17:57,220 --> 00:17:59,500 and part of this is because the detection history 391 00:17:59,500 --> 00:18:01,980 of them is quite low, but what's kind of 392 00:18:01,980 --> 00:18:05,250 I think is kind of staggering is that over half of 393 00:18:05,250 --> 00:18:06,940 or nearly half of the species 394 00:18:06,940 --> 00:18:09,600 we're finding statistically significant declines 395 00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:10,720 in abundance 396 00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:12,570 and there's only one species that we're 397 00:18:12,570 --> 00:18:15,130 actually seeing an increase 398 00:18:15,130 --> 00:18:17,980 but what I think is also a little bit more staggering 399 00:18:17,980 --> 00:18:20,500 from my point of view is that 90% 400 00:18:20,500 --> 00:18:22,860 of the forest birds that we monitor 401 00:18:22,860 --> 00:18:25,370 in Marsh-Billings are showing they might not 402 00:18:25,370 --> 00:18:28,980 be statistically significant declines, but over time 403 00:18:28,980 --> 00:18:31,720 their relative abundance are declining. 404 00:18:31,720 --> 00:18:33,760 So just sort of to kind of wrap 405 00:18:33,760 --> 00:18:37,610 up this kind of Vermont centric evaluation 406 00:18:37,610 --> 00:18:39,350 what we're seeing is, 407 00:18:39,350 --> 00:18:40,990 is comparisons to what's going on 408 00:18:40,990 --> 00:18:43,730 in our bird monitoring to the statewide is 409 00:18:43,730 --> 00:18:46,640 that we see are seeing similar declines 410 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:48,410 in Blackburnian Warbler compared to 411 00:18:48,410 --> 00:18:51,030 the state Common Yellowthroat, Eastern Wood-Peewee 412 00:18:53,072 --> 00:18:55,630 and Rose-breasted Grosbeak excuse me 413 00:18:56,730 --> 00:18:57,870 that's consistent 414 00:18:57,870 --> 00:19:01,230 between the two programs and both programs seem to be 415 00:19:01,230 --> 00:19:04,380 at least last I looked to seem to be showing is 416 00:19:04,380 --> 00:19:08,563 statistically significant increases in Pileated Woodpecker. 417 00:19:09,630 --> 00:19:12,977 What I find to be the most challenging 418 00:19:12,977 --> 00:19:15,860 or maybe even depressing thing 419 00:19:15,860 --> 00:19:18,300 or what we're trying to understand here more 420 00:19:18,300 --> 00:19:21,860 is why that there's many species that have been in the 421 00:19:21,860 --> 00:19:23,170 for Vermont forest 422 00:19:23,170 --> 00:19:25,170 for a monitoring protocol that seemed to be 423 00:19:25,170 --> 00:19:27,450 at least stable or increasing 424 00:19:27,450 --> 00:19:30,740 across the state are actually declining in Marsh-Billings 425 00:19:30,740 --> 00:19:33,580 and these are some of our very common species such 426 00:19:33,580 --> 00:19:35,960 as Ovenbird, and Red-eyed Vireo. 427 00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:38,440 We have Wood Thrush, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, 428 00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:39,723 Hairy woodpecker, 429 00:19:41,410 --> 00:19:44,320 Black-throated Green Warbler, Brown creeper and 430 00:19:45,620 --> 00:19:46,693 American Robin. 431 00:19:47,570 --> 00:19:48,403 So 432 00:19:49,430 --> 00:19:51,370 I'll just conclude, 433 00:19:51,370 --> 00:19:53,930 apologies for this is actually not great news 434 00:19:53,930 --> 00:19:55,750 but this is the way that it is 435 00:19:55,750 --> 00:19:58,300 but I do wanna mention that, 436 00:19:58,300 --> 00:20:00,070 the long-term commitment of our partners 437 00:20:00,070 --> 00:20:03,090 and volunteer support has made this work possible. 438 00:20:03,090 --> 00:20:05,820 I sort of look at sort of our data and our analysis 439 00:20:05,820 --> 00:20:09,350 as a working hypothesis so this is what our monitoring is 440 00:20:09,350 --> 00:20:11,530 and I think it's really valuable that we're able 441 00:20:11,530 --> 00:20:13,150 to compare this to other programs 442 00:20:13,150 --> 00:20:15,300 and I wanna continue doing that 443 00:20:15,300 --> 00:20:17,680 but we can't do this without the work of all of those folks 444 00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:19,819 and so I want to thank them, individually 445 00:20:19,819 --> 00:20:22,123 for their contributions, 446 00:20:23,890 --> 00:20:24,723 in general 447 00:20:24,723 --> 00:20:27,710 while we're seeing that our network level trends are stable 448 00:20:27,710 --> 00:20:28,543 we have a couple 449 00:20:28,543 --> 00:20:30,330 of parks where we're seeing some really, 450 00:20:31,420 --> 00:20:35,040 important declines of these forest specialist species 451 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:39,040 which is obviously concerning this isn't a new pattern 452 00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:40,610 but it is something that we haven't really 453 00:20:40,610 --> 00:20:42,600 been able to share with our parks before 454 00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:45,800 and so this is something that we're gonna be working 455 00:20:45,800 --> 00:20:49,100 further to understand why are these patterns happening? 456 00:20:49,100 --> 00:20:51,420 What are the underlying mechanisms? 457 00:20:51,420 --> 00:20:53,860 And to kind of, to dovetail off a little bit 458 00:20:53,860 --> 00:20:56,390 of Kate's points in the plenary is 459 00:20:56,390 --> 00:20:58,790 our program is really a position 460 00:20:58,790 --> 00:21:00,810 to trying to understand these changes 461 00:21:00,810 --> 00:21:02,610 and make practical recommendations 462 00:21:02,610 --> 00:21:04,070 to these parks for management 463 00:21:04,070 --> 00:21:06,230 and so we're looking to dig deeper 464 00:21:06,230 --> 00:21:09,160 into some of the mechanisms and understanding 465 00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:12,550 and also the species specific level, 466 00:21:12,550 --> 00:21:14,820 natural history requirements, so that there 467 00:21:14,820 --> 00:21:17,720 perhaps there are ways that they're promoting regeneration 468 00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:20,540 promoting a better forest health 469 00:21:20,540 --> 00:21:24,350 that we can promote actions, excuse me, that will lead 470 00:21:24,350 --> 00:21:26,150 to better forest health that will hopefully 471 00:21:26,150 --> 00:21:29,780 have some concurrent benefits to these birds 472 00:21:29,780 --> 00:21:32,620 but we'll continue doing this work and continue monitoring 473 00:21:32,620 --> 00:21:36,490 and engaging you folks on all of this in our parks. 474 00:21:36,490 --> 00:21:39,300 So that, I just wanna say, thanks for listening. 475 00:21:39,300 --> 00:21:40,133 I'm sorry. 476 00:21:40,133 --> 00:21:41,160 If I went over a little bit 477 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:42,650 there is our contact information. 478 00:21:42,650 --> 00:21:46,410 If you have any questions now I'm happy to take them. 479 00:21:46,410 --> 00:21:47,243 Thanks. 480 00:21:49,360 --> 00:21:52,110 - [Moderator] Here we go from Pete Kirby Miller 481 00:21:52,110 --> 00:21:53,920 the decline your document is concerning 482 00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:56,850 what research might be necessary to develop understanding 483 00:21:56,850 --> 00:22:01,103 for adaptive management strategies to combat those declines. 484 00:22:03,460 --> 00:22:06,220 - I knew you gonna have to read that one is what research 485 00:22:06,220 --> 00:22:08,200 might be needed necessary to develop. 486 00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:12,250 Well, yeah, so that's a really good question. 487 00:22:12,250 --> 00:22:15,030 I think that there are probably others listening that are 488 00:22:15,030 --> 00:22:17,430 probably better poised to answer that than I am. 489 00:22:18,350 --> 00:22:22,300 We have, what's one of the interesting sort 490 00:22:22,300 --> 00:22:24,843 of experiments that's happening in our network parks is 491 00:22:24,843 --> 00:22:27,300 that Marsh-Billings, which some of you may know 492 00:22:27,300 --> 00:22:29,910 has actually been doing silver culture for years. 493 00:22:29,910 --> 00:22:30,743 So it's actually one 494 00:22:30,743 --> 00:22:33,900 of those parks where we're able to actively manipulate 495 00:22:33,900 --> 00:22:36,530 and have actively manipulated the over story 496 00:22:36,530 --> 00:22:38,700 and some respects the understory. 497 00:22:38,700 --> 00:22:41,660 So I think that we can utilize some of that information to 498 00:22:41,660 --> 00:22:44,980 be assessing inference of how, 499 00:22:44,980 --> 00:22:48,630 time since disturbance or changes in certain features 500 00:22:48,630 --> 00:22:52,080 of the canopy are influencing those forest birds 501 00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:54,957 but I also think that there is an opportunity here 502 00:22:54,957 --> 00:22:56,550 and that looking, 503 00:22:56,550 --> 00:22:59,610 using the forest bird monitoring program and other areas 504 00:22:59,610 --> 00:23:02,340 across new England, that we can correlate 505 00:23:02,340 --> 00:23:05,490 this information to get, 506 00:23:05,490 --> 00:23:08,850 a better understanding of how manipulations 507 00:23:08,850 --> 00:23:12,530 in the forest are influencing forest birds. 508 00:23:12,530 --> 00:23:13,980 It can't be understated that, 509 00:23:15,260 --> 00:23:18,660 Hubbard Brook has a real, roughly 50 years 510 00:23:18,660 --> 00:23:21,870 of data when we are very similar communities 511 00:23:21,870 --> 00:23:24,660 and so I think that it's our, 512 00:23:24,660 --> 00:23:27,110 the opportunity is to combine some 513 00:23:27,110 --> 00:23:29,790 of these data sets to be able to ask some 514 00:23:29,790 --> 00:23:32,710 of those questions, but we do have some very 515 00:23:32,710 --> 00:23:35,580 specific species specific management 516 00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:39,330 at Marsh-Billings in particular that Kyle Jones 517 00:23:39,330 --> 00:23:41,580 who was the resource manager there for years to set 518 00:23:41,580 --> 00:23:44,570 up and sort of, looking at, 519 00:23:44,570 --> 00:23:46,640 the responses for example 520 00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:50,600 a Chestnut-sided warbler to different types of 521 00:23:52,670 --> 00:23:53,690 treatments. 522 00:23:53,690 --> 00:23:58,690 So it's a really good question that 523 00:23:58,740 --> 00:24:01,120 I hope that we begin to answer and essentially 524 00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:03,950 be able to develop these adaptive management frameworks 525 00:24:03,950 --> 00:24:05,240 to address. 526 00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:06,440 Thanks for the question.