A Monitoring Protocol to Assess Wintering Shorebird Population Trends

Phase 1 & 2 (2010, 2012): This project developed a sampling design and monitoring protocol for wintering shorebirds in the Central Valley and in the San Francisco Bay Estuary and develop an LCC-specific online shorebird monitoring portal publicly available at the California Avian Data Center. The three objectives in Phase II of this project are: 1) Complete the shorebird monitoring plan for the CA LCC by developing a sampling design and monitoring protocol for wintering shorebirds in coastal southern California and northern Mexico. 2) Develop models to evaluate the influence of habitat factors from multiple spatial scales on shorebird use of San Francisco Bay and managed wetlands in the Sacramento Valley, as a model for the entire CA LCC. 3) Develop an analytical framework to iteratively evaluate competing hypotheses about shorebird habitat associations and the impact of habitat changes as new monitoring data are available.

Science Delivery Phase (2013): This project conducted workshops with the CVJV and SFBJV separately to evaluate the capacity of the shorebird monitoring program, habitat availability and association modeling framework, and data summary applications. Another two workshops were held in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley's to convene wetland habitat managers to develop a list of ways to make the products from this project accessible.

Projects results may be found at www.prbo.org/pfss.
Please see this article about the project and its larger effort: The Pacific Flyway Shorebird Survey