A Habitat Assessment Protocol to Determine Suitability for Southwestern Willow Flycatcher Occupancy in the Northern Rio Grande Watershed

Overview

The goal of this study is to create a diagnostic “suitability” tool to assess potential habitat for southwestern willow flycatcher (SWFL) sites in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. The tool defined key parameters critical to the life stages of SWFL living in the Upper Rio Grande watershed based on insect forage, habitat structure, and occupancy data collected from known occupied vs unoccupied willow sites. Habitat was assessed with transects to collect height, canopy cover, and leaf gap data. Vegetation coverage was groundtruthed and drawn as polygons using Google Earth Pro. Terrestrial insect forage was sampled from available habitat and analyzed for insect Order and biomass. Habitat and forage characteristics of both occupied and unoccupied sites were statistically analyzed, and significant differences of the parameters defined the “cut score” for each parameter, creating a diagnostic tool by which to measure suitable habitat against poor habitat. The intent is to use this tool to assess other potential Southwestern Willow Flycatcher areas in the upper Rio Grande watershed; both to identify deficiencies and recommend management actions to improve sub-standard habitat based on parameter analysis with the “diagnostic” scoring tool.

Competition history

JSHS 2022 Category not listed

Resources

National JSHS abstract book

Related projects

ISEF · 2022