The Design of a Large-Scale Aerial Survey to Monitor Wintering Sea Duck Populations

• Activity Number: 264
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Emily Silverman*+ and Mark Koneff and Kathy Fleming and James Wortham
• Companies: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Keywords: sea duck ; monitoring ; aerial survey ; winter ; wildlife

Abstract

Current waterfowl monitoring is not designed to assess the 15 species of sea ducks that breed at high latitudes. Concern that some species are declining, and will be negatively affected by climate change, has increased interest in targeted sea duck surveys. We summarize two years of work aimed at establishing a comprehensive survey of sea ducks wintering along the Atlantic coast of the U.S. The survey is designed to provide information on abundance, distribution, habitat use, and trends. We discuss our efforts to addresses four primary information gaps related to sea duck mobility, aggregation, range, and detection. We also detail an effort to connect our current data to ten years of coastal sea duck surveys conducted from 1992 to 2002. Our goals are to provide timely data for management decisions related to harvest and habitat use, while laying the groundwork for long-term monitoring.