# Presentation: 179829

## Sampling Plan for the Marshbird Monitoring Program

## Constraints & Requirements

- Plan must be habitat-based
- Sampling intensity will vary
- Many areas will not be accessible
- Habitat locations will change
- Consistency with plans for other groups
- Plan must be practical

## Proposed Plan 

- Delineate regions
- Identify “designated areas” in each region (they comprise the target population for the region)
- Describe each area
- Group designated areas into strata
- Select survey locations in each stratum
- Prepare sampling plans for each stratum

## Bird Conservation Sub-regions

**Notes:**
Intersection of BCR and STate or Province
Done for all of Canada
Need some slight revision

## Identify Designated Areas

**Identify Designated Areas**

**1984 DAs; 641 important to secretive marshbirds**

**Notes:**
Prepared in collaboration with local biologists
Further review will lead to revisions

## Describe Each Area

- “Guidelines for preparing aquatic site descriptions” (PIF Symposium)
- Contents
- Boundaries and ownership
- Focal species using the site and timing of use
- Location of good and fair habitat within the site
- Access to the good and fair habitat and visibility
- Past and current surveys
- Potential survey methods
- Needed pilot studies
- >200 descriptions done

## Prepare BCS Sampling Plan

- ID the DAs that have any of the focal species
- Form strata, each of which will be surveyed
- Prepare sampling plans for each stratum

## Example

- BCS has 1 NWR, 6 WMAs, an area of playa lakes, 10 small wetlands each of which is a DA, an area of low density birds.

| Strata | DAs | Strata | DAs |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | NWR | 5 | 6 wetlands |
| 2 | 3 WMAs | 6 | the playas |
| 3 | 3 WMAs | 7 | low density area |
| 4 | 4 wetlands |  |  |

## NWI Coverage

## Sampling Plans Within Strata

## Guidelines for Sampling Plans

- Target population must be well-defined (e.g, so its size can be calculated)
- Can include only good habitat or not
- Can change between (or within) years
- Suggest distributing evenly (stations or clusters)

## Implications for Database Design

- Value exists in designing the database for many different groups.
- Can have 5 spatial, and 4 temporal, levels, so need up to 9 (or 10) “level” sampling
- Need “size” and number of sub-units for each unit at each level
- This information must be in the database
- We are developing one to hold it – for regional use.  I know of no others.
- With 10-stage sample, and variable sized units at each level, analysis will be complex using either survey sampling or mixed models.

## Example of Implementation

## Slide 15

|   | Number of areas | Number known to be important for... |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| State |  | Waterfowl | Waterbirds | Shorebirds |
| Arizona | 42 | 15 | 32 | 13 |
| California | 40 | 20 | 22 | 19 |
| Colorado | 44 | 0 | 29 | 22 |
| Idaho | 52 | 7 | 32 | 4 |
| Montana | 21 | 2 | 12 | 13 |
| Nevada | 48 | 15 | 20 | 2 |
| New Mexico | 37 | 9 | 20 | 12 |
| Oregon | 40 | 30 | 28 | 13 |
| Utah | 41 | 17 | 27 | 20 |
| Washington | 18 | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| Wyoming | 41 | 23 | 1 | 0 |
| All | 424 | 145 | 227 | 121 |

## Slide 16

| State | Prepared | Not prepared | Proportion prepared |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Arizona | 0 | 42 | 0.00 |
| California | 0 | 40 | 0.00 |
| Colorado | 17 | 27 | 0.39 |
| Idaho | 50 | 2 | 0.96 |
| Montana | 15 | 6 | 0.71 |
| Nevada | 25 | 23 | 0.52 |
| New Mexico | 0 | 37 | 0.00 |
| Oregon | 0 | 40 | 0.00 |
| Utah | 30 | 11 | 0.73 |
| Washington | 0 | 18 | 0.00 |
| Wyoming | 0 | 41 | 0.00 |
| Grand Total | 137 | 268 | 0.34 |

## 44 secretive marshbird surveys at present

| Survey | Aerial Water-fowl | Ground-based waterbird | Secretive Marshbird | Migrating Shorebird | Breeding Colonies | All surveys |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Existing survey | 117 | 119 |   44 |   29 |   79 |   388 |
| No survey at present |   28 | 112 |   73 |   93 |   64 |   370 |
|      Volunteers could conduct |     7 |   30 |   40 |   30 |   34 |   141 |
|      Volunteers could help |     0 |   13 |     4 |     5 |     4 |     26 |
|      Staff would conduct |     0 |   46 |   23 |   42 |   24 |   135 |
|      Survey would be difficult |   21 |   23 |     6 |   16 |     2 |     68 |
| Information lacking | 263 | 191 | 293 | 276 | 242 | 1265 |

- Opportunities for 73 more
- Volunteers could do 40 of them
- Staff would need to help or do all of 27 surveys
- Only 6 would be difficult

## Reports:  IWCBM Overview, Progress Report, Aquatic Bird Survey, Terrestrial Bird Survey, Data Management System, Analytic Tools, others

**Reports:  IWCBM Overview, Progress Report, Aquatic Bird Survey, Terrestrial Bird Survey, Data Management System, Analytic Tools, others**

## Major Obstacles

- Getting data contributed
- Getting surveyors, especially for low density areas

- Non-Obstacles

- Designing sampling plans (once labor
- available and practical constraints are known)

## Roles and Responsibilities

- USGS – Oversight, design, web site
- IWJV - Implementation
- Don Paul: UT, NV, CA
- Dan Casey: MT, ID, WY
- Bob Vahle: NM, AZ, CO
- Joe Latourette: WA
- Bruce 		   : OR
- WWG – Forum for decisions
- States, NWRs, Bd. Obs. – Conduct surveys

## Next Steps

- Review DAs
- Encourage prep’n of area descriptions
- Hold meetings to consider which sites can be surveyed
- Design BCS and strata sampling plans
- Select survey locations in every stratum
- Recruit surveyors for as many as possible
- Finish web site & data base
- Work on analytic methods

## Summary and Conclusions

- Comprehensive plan now developed
- I believe plan is flexible and practical enough, but independent review needed.
- Easy to carry out with other surveys.
- Need more people trying to use it, especially at the BCS level and in new habitats (e.g., coastal marshes)
- No databases exist to hold all the data
- Developing analytic methods will be non-trivial.