Multi-species habitat management at Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge: Using remote sensing to determine habitat requirements and management strategies for Bachman’s Sparrow and Northern Bobwhite in Red-cockaded Woodpecker managed habitat
Dates
Start Date
2022
End Date
2023
Summary
Upland pine ecosystems in USFWS Region 4 can support many trust species, but management is often directed at only a single species. At Piedmont NWR in central Georgia, management is focused on the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, but several other species (including Bachman’s Sparrow and Northern Bobwhite) could be benefited by slight alterations to management (e.g., more frequent burning or smaller burn units). We will build habitat use models using remotely sensed data and existing information on species occurrence at Piedmont NWR to determine how each of these species responds to management related to prescribed burning. We will then estimate how well these models perform both at Piedmont NWR (using newly collected groundtruthing data for [...]
Summary
Upland pine ecosystems in USFWS Region 4 can support many trust species, but management is
often directed at only a single species. At Piedmont NWR in central Georgia, management is
focused on the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, but several other species (including Bachman’s
Sparrow and Northern Bobwhite) could be benefited by slight alterations to management (e.g.,
more frequent burning or smaller burn units). We will build habitat use models using remotely
sensed data and existing information on species occurrence at Piedmont NWR to determine how
each of these species responds to management related to prescribed burning. We will then
estimate how well these models perform both at Piedmont NWR (using newly collected groundtruthing
data for all three species) and at other state-managed sites in Georgia (for Bachman’s
Sparrow). Finally, we will use our habitat use models and information on management costs to
build a decision support tool. This tool will provide recommendations on which management
actions can provide the greatest benefits to all three species simultaneously under different
budgets. This project will not only provide technical assistance for a specific management goal
at Piedmont NWR, but will create a framework for multi-species management that could be
applied to other NWRs.
