Increasing Efficiency of Conservation Application: Conservation Design for Rare Birds in the Upper Midwestern United States

• Activity Number: 138
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Wayne E. Thogmartin*+
• Companies: U.S. Geological Survey
• Keywords: conditional autoregression ; mixed effects ; optimization ; avian ecology ; strategic habitat conservation

Abstract

Efficiency in conservation increasingly occurs in the form of conservation design, a process comprised of landscape characterization and assessment, population response modeling, conservation opportunities assessment, optimal landscape design, and monitoring and evaluation. I used population response models to identify priority areas for conserving rare birds in the upper midwestern United States. I employed Bayesian hierarchical spatial count models to predict patterns in regional relative abundance. Spatial mapping of model predictions were assessed relative to the conservation estate to identify areas of peak abundance outside of direct management by governmental authority. I used simulated annealing to identify an optimal set of locations for delivering conservation effort in the hopes of maintaining a core of viable populations in perpetuity.