Migratory Birds

The Sparrow Helper tool allows for the evaluation of water management scenarios by generating, plotting, and mapping hydrologic metrics across a range of time scales to predict impacts of proposed water depth changes to sparrow subpopulations.

WADEM (Wader Distribution Evaluation Modeling) is a JEM model that estimates species-specific habitat suitability across the landscape for Great Egret ( Ardea alba ), White Ibis ( Eudocimus albus ), and Wood Stork ( Mycteria americana ).

At least 30 Alaskan bird species are affected and the geographic extent of the problem appears to be growing. In addition to Alaskan observations, we have received increasing numbers of reports from other parts of North America and Europe.

The Aleutian archipelago is a 2,000 km long chain of volcanically-derived treeless islands stretching from Unimak Island in the east to the Commander Islands in the west. These volcanic islands support a wide range of species including large numbers of seabirds and marine mammal species, some of which are threatened and endangered, leading to a high level of federal management concern.

Through the Changing Arctic Ecosystems (CAE) Initiative, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is informing key resource management decisions by better understanding how wildlife populations of special interest to the Department of the Interior (DOI) are responding to rapid physical changes in the Arctic. Below are some examples of how CAE research is informing decision-making on the status and trends...

Through the Changing Arctic Ecosystems (CAE) Initiative, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is informing key resource management decisions by better understanding how wildlife populations of special interest to the Department of the Interior (DOI) are responding to rapid physical changes in the Arctic. Below are some examples of how CAE research is informing Endangered Species Act decisions and...

More than 100,000 ha of native tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the northern Great Plains. Although prairies in this region evolved with grazing, fire, and climatic variability, management of FWS grasslands often has been passive and involved extended periods of rest. In 2008, the USGS and the FWS initiated a collaborative effort, the...

The Prairie Pothole Region of the northern Great Plains annually hosts 50–80% of North America’s ducks during the breeding season. Accordingly, there are significant government and private funds that go to conservation for the purposes of improving duck production in the region. The Prairie Pothole Region ecosystem has a number of stressors, intensive agriculture being chief among them. The...

Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC) leads a collaborative effort, spanning several studies, with the objective of improving techniques to assess the quality of spring migration habitat for ducks. Spring is a critical time in in the life cycle of migratory ducks because during migration they experience peak energetic needs at a time when food resources are often at their scarcest...

Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC) recently completed a project aimed at understanding the impacts of wetland drainage on wetlands that receive drainage water. The biological communities of prairie pothole wetlands evolved in a hydrologically dynamic system due to periodic wet and dry conditions. NPWRC research indicates that relative to wetlands in undrained landscapes, wetlands...

This effort is aimed at understanding how productivity of larger and more permanent wetlands is influenced by a combination of inter-annual hydrological dynamics and land-use impacts. Historically, aquatic-invertebrates productivity and abundance was driven by inter-annual hydrological dynamics because drying periods allow for nutrient cycling and a subsequent pulse of productivity when wet...

Emergent sandbar maps of the Missouri River produced by Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center continue to be used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor and manage critical breeding habitat for the endangered Interior population of least terns and the threatened Northern Great Plains population of piping plovers. These maps have been created and...