Hierarchical model analysis of the Atlantic Flyway Breeding Waterfowl Survey

Sauer, John R.; Zimmerman, Guthrie S.; Klimstra, Jon D.; Link, William A.

doi:10.1002/jwmg.748

Cited by 14 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…As part of the process, three populations, based on their breeding ground affiliation, have been identified for Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos): western, midcontinent, and eastern (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2017). Within the northeastern United States, the breeding population of Mallards has significantly declined since its peak in 1999 (Sauer et al 2014). Harvested birds in the lower Great Lakes region could originate from the adjacent midcontinent or eastern breeding populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins of harvested Mallards from Lake St. Clair, Ontario: a stable isotope approach

Palumbo¹,

Tozer²,

Hobson³

2019

ACE

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Determining origins of waterfowl is important for establishing appropriate management and conservation strategies. In North America, much information is available from long-term mark-recapture programs involving banding on breeding or molting grounds. However, this approach is less able to identify origins of individuals across broad areas where banding effort is low. We used stable-hydrogen isotope analyses of feathers (δ 2 H f) from Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) harvested during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 hunting seasons at Lake St. Clair (LSC), Ontario, Canada (n = 237 individuals). We created a feather isoscape and applied Bayesian assignment approaches to determine probability of origin. The proportion of hatch-year Mallards produced locally, i.e., at the same latitude as LSC, as opposed to farther north or south of LSC, ranged from 13.1% to 22.0% with almost no difference by sex. The proportion of after-hatch-year (AHY) birds that molted locally ranged from 3.5% to 11.7%, with slightly fewer local AHY females compared with local AHY males. Nearly all birds that did not originate locally came from latitudes to the north of LSC, and only 2 from south of LSC. Whether this pattern is representative of locations in the Great Lakes beyond our study area is unknown but is of great relevance for harvest management. As such, we are expanding our study with plans to examine isotope-based origins of Mallards and other harvested waterfowl species at locations throughout the Great Lakes region. Because of its unique potential to fill knowledge gaps, we advocate the use of the stable isotope technique in the management of North American waterfowl and encourage more research in this area. Origines des colverts prélevés sur le Lac St. Clair, dans l'Ontario : approche par isotopes stables RÉSUMÉ. La détermination des origines des oiseaux aquatiques est importante pour établir des stratégies appropriées de gestion et de conservation. En Amérique du Nord, de nombreuses informations sont disponibles auprès des programmes de marquage-recapture à long terme qui comprennent le marquage des territoires de reproduction ou de mue. Toutefois, cette approche est moins efficace pour identifier les origines des individus dans de vastes régions où l'effort de marquage est peu important. Nous avons utilisé les analyses par isotopes d'hydrogène stable sur les plumes (δ2Hf) de colverts (Anas platyrhynchos) prélevés au cours des saisons de chasse 2014-2015 et 2015-2016 sur le lac St. Clair (LSC), dans l'Ontario, au Canada (n = 237 individus). Nous avons créé une isocarte des plumes et appliqué des modèles d'affectation bayesiens pour déterminer la probabilité d'origine. La proportion de colverts de l'année produits localement, c'est-à-dire à la même latitude que le LSC, par opposition aux individus provenant de régions plus au nord ou au sud du LSC, variait de 13,1 % à 22,0 %, pratiquement sans différence entre les sexes. La proportion d'oiseaux après l'année d'éclosion qui avaient mué localement variait de 3,5 % à 11,7 %, les femelles étan...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origins of harvested Mallards from Lake St. Clair, Ontario: a stable isotope approach

Palumbo¹,

Tozer²,

Hobson³

2019

ACE

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“…Greater than 20,000 ha in size, most of the Forsythe refuge is comprised of salt marsh with several freshwater impoundments created to provide moist-soil seeds for wintering waterfowl. The most abundant dabbling duck wintering at Forsythe is the American black duck Anas rubripes, a species of conservation concern since their population began a steady decline in the 1950s (Rusch et al 1989, Conroy et al 2002, Sauer et al 2014. There has been a great deal of waterfowl research conducted at Forsythe over the past decade, much of which has sought to address information gaps in black duck ecology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating Waterfowl Carrying Capacity at Local Scales: A Case Study From Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey1

Ringelman

Williams

Castelli

et al. 2018

Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management

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The management of wintering North American waterfowl is based on the premise that the amount of foraging habitat can limit populations. To estimate carrying capacity of winter habitats, managers use bioenergetic models to quantify energy (food) availability and energy demand, and use results as planning tools to meet regional conservation objectives. Regional models provide only coarse estimates of carrying capacity because habitat area, habitat energy values, and temporal trends in population-level demand are difficult to quantify precisely at large scales. We took advantage of detailed data previously collected on wintering waterfowl at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding marsh, New Jersey, and created a well-constrained local model of carrying capacity. We used 1,223 core samples collected between 2006 and 2015 to estimate food availability. We used species-specific 24-h time–activity data collected between 2011 and 2013 to estimate daily energy expenditure, morphometrically corrected for site- and day-specific thermoregulatory costs. To estimate population-level energy demand, we used standardized monthly ground surveys (2005–2014) to create a migration curve, and proportionally scaled that to fit aerial survey data (2005–2014). Crucially, we also explicitly incorporated estimates of variance in all of these parameters and conducted a sensitivity analysis to diagnose the most important sources of variation in the model. Our results from an outlier-removed, a strict depletion model indicated that at estimated mean levels of supply (923 million kcal) and cumulative demand (3.4 billion kcal), refuge food resources were depleted before November. However, a constant-supply model that represented tidal replenishment of resources indicated that just enough energy was present to sustain peak winter populations. Variation in model output appeared to be driven primarily by uncertainty in population abundance during peak periods of use, emphasizing a new management focus on studying migration chronologies of waterfowl. This model allows for relative assessment of biases and uncertainties in carrying-capacity modeling, and serves as a framework identifying critical science needs to improve local and regional waterfowl management planning.

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“…Population estimates were derived from combining survey data from USFWS and CWS surveys into a single estimate. For mallards, we combined the WBPHS data with data from the Atlantic Flyway Breeding Waterfowl Survey (AFBWS; Sauer, Zimmerman, Klimstra, & Link, ), which provided a population estimate for mallards from Virginia north to Maine. We combined data from the AFBWS and Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) to derive a population estimate for wood ducks from Florida north to Maine (Zimmerman, Sauer, Fleming, Link, & Garrettson, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi‐species duck harvesting using dynamic programming and multi‐criteria decision analysis

Johnson

Zimmerman

Huang

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Multiple species are often exposed to a common hunting season, but harvest and population objectives may not be fully achieved if harvest potential varies among species and/or species abundances are not correlated through time. Our goal was to develop an approach for setting a common hunting season that would recognize heterogeneity in species productivity and would select annual hunting seasons conditioned on the status of individual species.2. We first used stochastic dynamic programming to generate optimal, state-dependent harvest strategies for 18 candidate regulatory scenarios. We simulated the performance of these strategies, and then used multi-criteria decision analysis to identify preferred regulatory scenarios for duck hunting seasons in the Atlantic Flyway of the U.S.3. Generally, estimates of annual population size were not correlated among species.Mallards had the highest estimated intrinsic rate of growth, green-winged teal, wood ducks, and ring-necked ducks had intermediate values, and goldeneyes were the least productive. Estimated carrying capacity was highest for mallards and lowest for green-winged teal. 4. Managers had greatest interest in maximizing season length (33%) and aggregate duck abundance (28%), and less interest in maximizing aggregate harvest (19%) and the number of years between a change in hunting season regulations (19%).Several regulatory scenarios provided acceptable trade-offs among these objectives. Synthesis and applications.Separate hunting seasons for various species of game may be untenable, either due to the added cost and regulatory complexity, or because selective harvesting of stocks may be difficult due to problems in species identification. Rather than averaging species-specific productivities, or basing hunting seasons on the least (or most) productive species, we describe an approach in which productivity and annual population status are considered 1448 | Journal of Applied Ecology JOHNSON et al.

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Hierarchical model analysis of the Atlantic Flyway Breeding Waterfowl Survey

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Origins of harvested Mallards from Lake St. Clair, Ontario: a stable isotope approach

Origins of harvested Mallards from Lake St. Clair, Ontario: a stable isotope approach

Estimating Waterfowl Carrying Capacity at Local Scales: A Case Study From Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, New Jersey1

Multi‐species duck harvesting using dynamic programming and multi‐criteria decision analysis

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