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Activity Number: 233
Type: Topic Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
Abstract - #308843
Title: Spatio-Temporal Analysis for Bird Migration Phenology
Author(s): Ali Arab*+ and Jason Courter
Companies: Georgetown University and Taylor University
Keywords: phenology ; hierarchical models ; spatio-temporal analysis ; MCMC ; climate change ; citizen science
Abstract:

The study of changes in the patterns of bird arrival data is an important problem in phenology as the bird migratory processes can serve as potential bioindicators of climate change. To this end, several recent studies have analyzed trends in bird migration patterns and provided evidence that pattern changes in these processes are correlated with climate effects. However, most studies ignore spatio-temporal variability in migration data which results in loss of important information across spatial and temporal scales. We discuss a spatio-temporal framework for analyzing birds spring arrival data that also allows for investigating potential links to climate indices. We use two citizen science databases for Purple Martins as an example of long range migrants; historic bird arrival data (1905-1940) from the North American Bird Phenology Program (BPP), and data for recent years (2001-2010) from the Purple Martin Conservation Association. Our results show significantly earlier spring arrivals for Purple Martins in most of the U.S. with link to Winter North Atlantic Oscillation. We also discuss potential sources of bias in citizen science data and potential remedies will be investigated.


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