Integrating autonomously recorded audio data with traditional field surveys to improve detectability estimates for North American birds

Around the world, birds have been declining at an alarming rate. It is therefore important that conservationists use as many resources as they can when making informed conservation decisions. Autonomous recording units (ARUs) have become an increasingly popular choice for monitoring bird populations, because they can be left in highly remote regions (such as Canada’s Boreal Forest) and automatically record birds throughout their breeding season. The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) is a national leader in ARU research, and have collected thousands of data points across Canada for hundreds of birds. This project will seek to synthesize these ARU datasets collected by ABMI and improve previous estimates of detectability, which allow for conservation managers to decide exactly where and when to monitor. By improving monitoring decisions, the limited budgets set out for conservation can be more efficiently spent year after year.

Faculty Supervisor:

Joseph Bennett;Adam Smith

Student:

Partner:

Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Carleton University

Program: