Decision Science

If invasive plants are producing pollen and nectar used by native pollinators, what happens when a manager decides to control the invasive plant? Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center is addressing this question and has found that pollinators are adept at changing their resource acquisition strategies as abundantly flowering invasive species decline. In addition, it appears that the invasive...

The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provides much essential information for assessing bird populations, but it is unknown how inherent assumptions of the BBS apply to grassland birds in the Northern Plains. Understanding the effects of these assumptions on our understanding of grassland bird populations is essential given widespread declines of grassland birds as well as recent and...

Monitoring colonial waterbirds is essential to detect and to provide insights about changes in waterbird distribution and abundance. For colonial waterbirds, major population fluctuations often go undetected because surveys are not conducted regularly, inventory methods are inconsistent, or estimates have unknown reliability. The waterbird colony at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in North...

Sound management of migratory bird breeding populations in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region hinges on effective monitoring programs and comprehensive analyses of long-term survey data. To this end, Northern Prairie provides support to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in several important areas. The Four-Square-Mile Breeding Duck and Habitat Survey was developed by Northern Prairie in the mid...

The objectives of this study are to (1) investigate whether the immune system will respond to chemical stressors, such as new flame retardant compounds, and (2) determine if such chemical stressors influence white blood cells (WBC) responses after exposure to a viral pathogen mimicking bird flu.

The biggest natural resource management challenges include competing views of the value and uses of those resources in society. Patuxent scientists develop methods to manage resources given those competing views under a “structured decision making” (SDM) framework. Our scientists both practice and train others in key SDM skills, such as model development and monitoring design.

A Decision Support System (DSS) can be defined in many ways. The working definition the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) uses is, "A spatially based computer application or data that assists a researcher or manager in making decisions ." This is quite a broad definition and it needs to be, as the possibilities for types of DSS are limited only by the user group and the developer...

Research in population biology is concerned with factors affecting the change in a population over time, including births, deaths, immigration and emigration. Despite the potential importance of immigration and emigration, empirical data on movement patterns are lacking in many systems.

Maintaining a current understanding of ecological conditions is fundamental to the National Park Service in meeting its mission to preserve park resources in an unimpaired state for future generations. Ecological monitoring establishes reference conditions, which over time help to define the normal limits of natural variation, determine standards for comparing future changes, and identify the need...

Accurately quantifying and mapping wildlife habitat is critical to investigations of species distribution and habitat relationships, and can greatly facilitate management of forests for multiple resources. However acquiring field-based, empirical data is often costly and labor intensive. Modeling provides an alternative technique for describing and mapping habitat, but the usefulness of models...

The Hawaiian Hoary Bat ( Lasiurus cinereus semotus ) is the only extant land mammal native to the Hawaiian archipelago. It is listed as endangered due to apparent population declines, and a lack of knowledge concerning its distribution, abundance, and habitat needs. Agencies and landowners in Hawai‘i seek to assist in the creation of sustainable uses for managed lands while also protecting bat...

Mesic forests of Hawai‘i island provide an ideal system for the study of forest restoration because they have a similar history to other tropical and subtropical forests globally, while maintaining a relatively simple species assemblage. Many of these forests were cleared for grazing, and then later abandoned, to become dominated by pasture grasses that form competitive layers such that native...