Cinnamon teal with a GPS tracking backpack that weighs 10 grams, making it much more successful in staying on longer than heavier tracking devices.
Waterbird Ecology and Movement in the Terminal Lakes Across the Great Basin
Active
By Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
April 25, 2025
How do changing conditions in the terminal lakes of the Great Basin effect the migratory birds that depend on them? USGS scientists investigate bird movement and habitat use to find out.
Overview:
USGS scientists are tracking the movement of migratory water birds in the Great Basin to understand how they rely on terminal lakes and wetlands. Migratory birds use and travel between multiple terminal lakes and wetlands over the seasons in the Basin. Linking detailed bird movement data to critical water conditions is an important component for future management of water and habitats. A primary goal of this research is to provide context for decision makers regarding the outcomes of water management actions on migratory bird populations.
Background:
The Great Basin is North America’s largest endorheic watershed, meaning there is no drainage to the ocean. All the water flowing into the region evaporates, sinks underground, or flows into terminal lakes. Terminal Lakes are land-locked bodies of water generally with a higher salinity – or saltiness, like an ocean, bay, or salt-water estuary. Terminal lakes in the Great Basin are a vital rest stop for migrating birds. They provide habitat and resources to support them during various life-stages like migration, breeding, molting, and wintering. In the last 150 years Great Basin terminal lakes shrunk by as much as 90 percent. Terminal lake wetlands decreased by as much as 47 percent. Decreased water levels in terminal lakes and wetlands are due to water diversions, lake and groundwater use, and drought. Understanding how changing conditions influence vulnerable bird populations requires more water monitoring and ecological data. Available information on waterbird movement is not enough to understand bird use across the terminal lakes or among all bird guilds of interest.
The Bird Movement project launched in 2023 and is tracking six species of waterbirds in an in-depth investigation as they travel through and use the terminal lakes of the Great Basin. These six species are Eared Grebe and Wilson’s phalarope, American Avocet and Black-necked Stilt, American White pelican, and Cinnamon Teal. They were chosen for their affinity for Saline Lakes and are dependent on a wide breath of ecological functions from the lakes.
Meet the Team:
Eared Grebe
Wilsons Pharalope
American Avocet
American Avocet
Black Necked Stilt
White Pelican
Cinnamon Teal
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
How are birds tracked?
The birds are captured using remote triggered nets placed in areas where they forage or rest. They are carefully removed from the netting and basic physical measurements are taken, such as weight and size. A GPS tracker is attached to the back of the bird using elastic and Teflon straps, like a little backpack. Depending on the bird type, other attachment methods include a leg loop, or with the help of veterinarians, placed under the skin. The GPS trackers send high resolution location data via the cell phone network to cloud-based storage where it can be retrieved and analyzed by researchers.
What story can the data tell?
Monitoring bird movement highlights exactly how the birds are interacting with the landscape. Terminal lakes and wetlands need to provide habitat, food, and water at the right places at the right time. When one of those needs isn’t met, birds or management decisions need to adjust if possible.
Drought can lead to food web instability. If too much water evaporates that is not replaced with inflows, salinity increases to extreme levels and degrades vital food resources, like brine shrimp and pile worms. If not enough water and food is available at one lake, birds may move to another terminal lake to feed.
What if a bird population cannot leave an area during a drought? For instance, Eared Grebes spend 3-4 months flightless in the fall while they molt their wing feathers. During this process their body mass changes, and they become flightless. Eared Grebes can choose where to molt, often at Mono Lake, Great Salt Lake, and Lake Abert - to a lesser extent - but after becoming flightless they are vulnerable to ecosystem disfunctions. In this scenario, resource managers could choose to divert less water away from the lake to protect the birds.
Migratory birds use the terminal lakes as a network to meet their needs. Bird movement data can show how that network ties together in the Great Basin, and how it connects to the larger picture of the Pacific and Central flyways. Tracking multiple species at multiple lakes is necessary because different species require different resources, and each lake offers a unique landscape. The data can show patterns and variation in habitat use over space and time; as well as how the birds are responding to stresses from drought, water-quality, water availability and salinity.
Project Objectives:
Collect and combine the data necessary to quantify bird dispersal and use across the terminal lakes as a network.
Identify habitat characteristics that are important to representative bird species and quantify the birds’ use and/or selection of habitats.
Develop a water sampling design that links collection of habitat and water-quality data to regions of recent high-intensity bird use. 
No one agency can do this work alone. This project is just a small portion of a larger collaboration and coordination effort with other federal and state agencies, non-profit groups, and universities who collect similar bird movement, habitat characteristic, and water-quality data across the Great Basin terminal lakes system.
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
GPS Tracking Progress:
The USGS as well as the University of Connecticut, Oikonos, and the Tracy Aviary have been collaborating to track these birds. Check out these bird movement tracking examples as of 2024:
Phalaropes
- Phalaropes are the smallest bird species to be tracked by satellite by using 2-gram satellite transmitters known as Platform Transfer Terminals. These have given us data from over 700 locations.
89 were tagged with MOTUS transmitters. 27 of these have been detected and provided information regarding 123 movements between receiver locations.
American Avocets
- We have marked over 100 of these birds! In the first year and a half, nearly one million locations were received.
- Among the birds returning from 2023, nearly one third returned to the lake they bred at the prior year.
We have found that their distribution at lake locations changes as time goes on as well as preferences within the lakes themselves. There is a lot of bird movement near freshwater springs.
Future work:
We will continue to expand our efforts to document space and movement of other species. This includes marking additional White Pelicans in 2025 and marking Eared Grebe, Black-Necked Stilts, and Cinnamon Teal over the next two years.
All animal studies were performed under the auspices of the USGS Western Ecological Research Center and University of California Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees.
If you are unable to access or download a product, email salinelakeecosystemsiwaa@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation.
Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series: Bird Movements
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
Cinnamon teal wearing a tracking backpack
Cinnamon teal with a GPS tracking backpack that weighs 10 grams, making it much more successful in staying on longer than heavier tracking devices.
Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series: Bird Movements
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
Banding station at Lake Abert
Research in the field means making the most of your surroundings! Scientist Andrea Mott set up this work station on the dry lake bed of Lake Abert to get the birds banded with GPS trackers close to where they were captured.
Research in the field means making the most of your surroundings! Scientist Andrea Mott set up this work station on the dry lake bed of Lake Abert to get the birds banded with GPS trackers close to where they were captured.
White-faced Ibis temporarily captured for research
White-faced Ibis breed in colonies that shift locations from year to year with changes in water levels. The birds usually nest in dense marsh growth such as bulrush or cattails.
White-faced Ibis breed in colonies that shift locations from year to year with changes in water levels. The birds usually nest in dense marsh growth such as bulrush or cattails.
How do changing conditions in the terminal lakes of the Great Basin effect the migratory birds that depend on them? USGS scientists investigate bird movement and habitat use to find out.
Overview:
USGS scientists are tracking the movement of migratory water birds in the Great Basin to understand how they rely on terminal lakes and wetlands. Migratory birds use and travel between multiple terminal lakes and wetlands over the seasons in the Basin. Linking detailed bird movement data to critical water conditions is an important component for future management of water and habitats. A primary goal of this research is to provide context for decision makers regarding the outcomes of water management actions on migratory bird populations.
Background:
The Great Basin is North America’s largest endorheic watershed, meaning there is no drainage to the ocean. All the water flowing into the region evaporates, sinks underground, or flows into terminal lakes. Terminal Lakes are land-locked bodies of water generally with a higher salinity – or saltiness, like an ocean, bay, or salt-water estuary. Terminal lakes in the Great Basin are a vital rest stop for migrating birds. They provide habitat and resources to support them during various life-stages like migration, breeding, molting, and wintering. In the last 150 years Great Basin terminal lakes shrunk by as much as 90 percent. Terminal lake wetlands decreased by as much as 47 percent. Decreased water levels in terminal lakes and wetlands are due to water diversions, lake and groundwater use, and drought. Understanding how changing conditions influence vulnerable bird populations requires more water monitoring and ecological data. Available information on waterbird movement is not enough to understand bird use across the terminal lakes or among all bird guilds of interest.
The Bird Movement project launched in 2023 and is tracking six species of waterbirds in an in-depth investigation as they travel through and use the terminal lakes of the Great Basin. These six species are Eared Grebe and Wilson’s phalarope, American Avocet and Black-necked Stilt, American White pelican, and Cinnamon Teal. They were chosen for their affinity for Saline Lakes and are dependent on a wide breath of ecological functions from the lakes.
Meet the Team:
Eared Grebe
Wilsons Pharalope
American Avocet
American Avocet
Black Necked Stilt
White Pelican
Cinnamon Teal
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
How are birds tracked?
The birds are captured using remote triggered nets placed in areas where they forage or rest. They are carefully removed from the netting and basic physical measurements are taken, such as weight and size. A GPS tracker is attached to the back of the bird using elastic and Teflon straps, like a little backpack. Depending on the bird type, other attachment methods include a leg loop, or with the help of veterinarians, placed under the skin. The GPS trackers send high resolution location data via the cell phone network to cloud-based storage where it can be retrieved and analyzed by researchers.
What story can the data tell?
Monitoring bird movement highlights exactly how the birds are interacting with the landscape. Terminal lakes and wetlands need to provide habitat, food, and water at the right places at the right time. When one of those needs isn’t met, birds or management decisions need to adjust if possible.
Drought can lead to food web instability. If too much water evaporates that is not replaced with inflows, salinity increases to extreme levels and degrades vital food resources, like brine shrimp and pile worms. If not enough water and food is available at one lake, birds may move to another terminal lake to feed.
What if a bird population cannot leave an area during a drought? For instance, Eared Grebes spend 3-4 months flightless in the fall while they molt their wing feathers. During this process their body mass changes, and they become flightless. Eared Grebes can choose where to molt, often at Mono Lake, Great Salt Lake, and Lake Abert - to a lesser extent - but after becoming flightless they are vulnerable to ecosystem disfunctions. In this scenario, resource managers could choose to divert less water away from the lake to protect the birds.
Migratory birds use the terminal lakes as a network to meet their needs. Bird movement data can show how that network ties together in the Great Basin, and how it connects to the larger picture of the Pacific and Central flyways. Tracking multiple species at multiple lakes is necessary because different species require different resources, and each lake offers a unique landscape. The data can show patterns and variation in habitat use over space and time; as well as how the birds are responding to stresses from drought, water-quality, water availability and salinity.
Project Objectives:
Collect and combine the data necessary to quantify bird dispersal and use across the terminal lakes as a network.
Identify habitat characteristics that are important to representative bird species and quantify the birds’ use and/or selection of habitats.
Develop a water sampling design that links collection of habitat and water-quality data to regions of recent high-intensity bird use. 
No one agency can do this work alone. This project is just a small portion of a larger collaboration and coordination effort with other federal and state agencies, non-profit groups, and universities who collect similar bird movement, habitat characteristic, and water-quality data across the Great Basin terminal lakes system.
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
GPS Tracking Progress:
The USGS as well as the University of Connecticut, Oikonos, and the Tracy Aviary have been collaborating to track these birds. Check out these bird movement tracking examples as of 2024:
Phalaropes
- Phalaropes are the smallest bird species to be tracked by satellite by using 2-gram satellite transmitters known as Platform Transfer Terminals. These have given us data from over 700 locations.
89 were tagged with MOTUS transmitters. 27 of these have been detected and provided information regarding 123 movements between receiver locations.
American Avocets
- We have marked over 100 of these birds! In the first year and a half, nearly one million locations were received.
- Among the birds returning from 2023, nearly one third returned to the lake they bred at the prior year.
We have found that their distribution at lake locations changes as time goes on as well as preferences within the lakes themselves. There is a lot of bird movement near freshwater springs.
Future work:
We will continue to expand our efforts to document space and movement of other species. This includes marking additional White Pelicans in 2025 and marking Eared Grebe, Black-Necked Stilts, and Cinnamon Teal over the next two years.
All animal studies were performed under the auspices of the USGS Western Ecological Research Center and University of California Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees.
If you are unable to access or download a product, email salinelakeecosystemsiwaa@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation.
Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series: Bird Movements
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
Cinnamon teal wearing a tracking backpack
Cinnamon teal with a GPS tracking backpack that weighs 10 grams, making it much more successful in staying on longer than heavier tracking devices.
Cinnamon teal with a GPS tracking backpack that weighs 10 grams, making it much more successful in staying on longer than heavier tracking devices.
Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series: Bird Movements
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
The fourth webinar in the Saline Lakes Ecosystems IWAA Fall 2024 Webinar Series is on movement of bird species associated with Great Basin terminal lake ecosystems. Cory Overton of the Western Ecological Research Center gives an overview of the USGS bird movement monitoring strategy and presents results from the 2024 field season.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Species Management Research Program, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Utah Water Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC), Saline Lake Ecosystems Integrated Water Availability Assessment
Banding station at Lake Abert
Research in the field means making the most of your surroundings! Scientist Andrea Mott set up this work station on the dry lake bed of Lake Abert to get the birds banded with GPS trackers close to where they were captured.
Research in the field means making the most of your surroundings! Scientist Andrea Mott set up this work station on the dry lake bed of Lake Abert to get the birds banded with GPS trackers close to where they were captured.
White-faced Ibis temporarily captured for research
White-faced Ibis breed in colonies that shift locations from year to year with changes in water levels. The birds usually nest in dense marsh growth such as bulrush or cattails.
White-faced Ibis breed in colonies that shift locations from year to year with changes in water levels. The birds usually nest in dense marsh growth such as bulrush or cattails.