Monitoring Climate Change With Community Science
Earth is getting hotter. Species that live among mountain slopes have the option of shifting their ranges to coller elevetions. In some places, these upslope shifts have set in motion an “escalator to extinction” where species shift upslope until they eventually run out of room. However, it is totally unknown how local Oregon birds are (or are not) changing elevations where they live. In fact, we don’t have a great understandng of which elevations birds live at right now.
Here’s where you come into the picture. Summer is a great time to get out into the cool Pacific Northwest forests to enjoy the songs and bright colors of our breeding birds. Spending an early morning going birding is a delight, and even better when you are contributing to a birder-led effort to understand how climate change might affect our local birdlife.
How to participate? It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
Where to go?
For 2021 we’re piloting the Mountain Bird Network at three sites: Mt. Hood, Oregon; Mt. Seymour, British Columbia; and Deception Peak (a.k.a Ski Sante Fe), New Mexico. We’re hoping to expand in the coming years, but in the meantime, we’re looking for birders in OR, BC, and NM to lend a hand!
When to go?
Between sunrise and 10am on any day without rain between June 1 and July 15. This is the breeding season and we are interested in documenting breeding season distributions. Even one morning would provide great data (while being a fun excuse to get out into the woods and bird), and the more days you contribute, the better!
What to do?
Stand in one place for five minutes and record all birds that you see or hear within 50 meters of where you are standing and add them to an eBird checklist. Viola, you’ve completed a point count! Now do the same thing again: keep standing in the same spot for another five minutes, and record all birds as a second point count (added to a second checklist) at the exact same location. Continue your walk/hike/drive and complete additional paired point counts as you go.
If you want to be able to submit a full eBird checklist, you can simply add the close-by birds to your list, share with MountainBirdNetwork, then edit the list to add additional distant birds (distant ravens, etc.).
Note that all point count sites should be at least 150 m apart from one another, to ensure that each sample is counting the birds at a distinct location. We are particularly interested in capturing birds at different elevations, so you would ideally move across various elevations during your trip if you are able. Once you have completed your counts, share them with MountainBirdNetwork, the eBird account we have created to manage this project.
Why point counts, and why repeat them at each location?
Point counts provide exceptionally fine-scale data, and are incredibly useful for statistically modeling where birds actually live. By doing two point counts back-to-back at the same exact spot, you provide the replication necessary to estimate bird detectability, an important aspect of modeling bird abundance at a given site. The basic idea is that there may be a bird present that is hidden and quiet, and by repeating point counts it is possible to account for this.
Why Mt. Hood?
Mt. Hood is an easily accessible and fairly tall local mountain, with great birds across all elevational zones. By thoroughly documenting bird abundanes across Mt. Hood’s elevational gradient in 2021, we will create a fantastic baseline dataset that will be used to monitor future changes. By contributing data for Mt. Hood, we add our local charistmatic mountain to a small network that we hope to expand in the coming years.
What exactly will we do with these data?
We will use the data from all observers to model species’ abundances along Mt. Hood’s elevational gradient, and we will share these results with all participants. The goal is to write and publish a scientific manuscript using these data to show how a community-led effort by local birders can effectively monitor species distributions along mountain slopes. These publications and communications will not disclose the identity of individual observers.
For questions, please contact Mt. Hood chapter leader Matt Chmielewski, a Portland-based postdoctoral researcher at Temple University (mwchmielewski@gmail.com). For project-wide questions you can contact Ben Freeman, project leader and postdoctoral researcher the University of British Columbia (freeman@zoology.ubc.ca).