BirdLocale: WLFW Landscape Restoration Bird Assessment
USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service has partnered with the University of Georgia, Quail Forever, and state agencies to conduct an extensive study across 25 states of the USA to assess the impacts of management practices on the northern bobwhite population. As part of this project, biologists will be collecting field data like bobwhite counts, and percentage cover of different cover types (grass, shrub, forb, etc.). Apart from these human-collected data, these biologists will also be using Acoustic Recording Units (ARUs) to collect data on bird calls.
The goals of project are:
- Estimate the spatial distribution (i.e., occupancy) of bobwhites using the Breeding Bird Survey, eBird dataset, agency surveys, and other datasets to identify priority landscapes for restoration (i.e., opportunity maps).
- Estimate the effect of conservation actions on bobwhite occupancy and abundance using data collected from Quail Forever field staff.
- Using remote sensing data, identify working forests and pastureland that are opportunities for bobwhite conservation.
- Develop a web app to provide a common platform to all biologists to upload their ARU data directly to amazon web servers.
