Treesearch

The diversity of climate and topography across the Rocky Mountains has resulted in a broad spectrum of fire regimes ranging from frequent, low-severity fires to infrequent stand-replacement events. Such variation in fire history contributes to landscape structure and dynamics, and in turn can influence subsequent fire behavior (Allen et al. 2002). In essence, landscapes across the Rocky Mountains are shifting mosaics that reflect variation in disturbance frequency, severity, and time since the last disturbance. Superimposed on, and interacting with, fire regimes are other natural disturbanc...

Fire was a common prehistoric disturbance in most southwestern grasslands, oak savannas, and coniferous forests, but not in Sonoran and Mojave desertscrub, or in riparian ecosystems. Prescribed burning should be applied, but under experimental conditions that facilitate studying its impacts on birds and other components of biodiversity. Fire plays a critical role in maintaining a balance between desert grassland and Chihuahuan desertscrub, but unburned areas also are important for birds dependent upon woody vegetation and/or heavy grass cover. Understory fire probably once played a...

Fire was once an important component of the disturbance regime in oak woodlands of the Sierra Nevada foothills. In addition to lightning-ignited fires, anthropogenic sources of ignition have historically been important until fire suppression activities in the mid- 20th century lengthened fire return intervals. Few fire history studies have addressed oak woodlands, and studies of the effects of fire on birds of oak woodlands are even more scarce. We review existing information on changes in the fire regime of California's oak woodlands and the effects of fire on the vegetation and attempt...

Unlike many other ecosystems in North America, the boreal forest in Canada still retains a natural fire regime. However, increasing industrial forestry, primarily clear cutting, could alter natural fire dynamics and adversely affect some species. A possible solution to this, promoted by many forest managers, is to cut the forest in a way that emulates natural fire patterns on the landscape (e.g. Hunter 1993). This can be done by retaining some live trees on clear cuts to emulate wood left after a burn and by laying out cutblocks on the landscape in a similar size and shape distribution as...

Bird monitoring is at a crossroads. While monitoring programs have existed in North America for nearly a century, recent political, biological, sociological, and economic changes necessitate a new and more efficient approach. Fortunately we now have tools available to meet the demands, including powerful coalitions of the willing within agencies, organizations, and universities. Further, rapid advances in several areas auger well for the process: specifically advances in monitoring methods, data archiving, and extremely powerful computer tools that allow retrieval and analysis, all have...

The Coordinated Bird Monitoring Program (Bart and Ralph, this volume) program is helping biologists around the country design short-term monitoring projects for birds. We have found that addressing a series of questions (table 1), in a systematic way, helps insure that projects are well planned. The process is being used by several States and organizations in the U.S. Here I describe it in general terms with examples.

There are dozens of programs and methodologies for monitoring and inventory of bird populations, differing in geographic scope, species focus, field methods and purpose. However, most of the emphasis has been placed on large-scale monitoring programs. People interested in assessing bird numbers and long-term trends in small geographic areas such as a local birding area, or in management units such as parks or regional forests often find it hard to get guidance on which methods would be best for them while also providing useful results. To help meet this need, we have developed a set of...

Populations of many marsh-dependent birds appear to be declining, but we currently lack a continental program that provides estimates of population trends for most secretive marshbirds. The survey protocol outlined here is a standardized survey methodology being used on a pilot basis at National Wildlife Refuges and other protected wetland areas across North America and will ultimately be refined and proposed for use in a continental marshbird monitoring program. These protocols: (1) provide flexibility so that data from ongoing local and regional monitoring efforts may be pooled to the...

Our ability to manage and conserve colonial waterbird species throughout Mexico, Meso-America, Canada, the Caribbean nations, and the United States is presently hampered by a lack of reliable information on the status and trends of their populations, information that can only be obtained by collecting comparable data using standardized data collection techniques that estimate bias. The U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is working in concert with the North American Waterbird Monitoring Partnership (Kushlan et al. 2002) to coordinate waterbird monitoring efforts and...

It is accepted and acknowledged that effective conservation requires a scientific basis, and it is accepted and acknowledged that scientific research benefits conservation. However, there has been little effort to bring together the resources of the research communities— both academic and government-based—with the conservation planning and implementation programs. Most scientific research is driven by either the investigator's own research interests or, on the government side, by the relatively short-term, relatively local management needs of natural resource managers. Also lacking is a...