New Mexico Motus Prioritization Tool Data

Addressing survival and movement of priority migratory avian species of concern along the Pacific Flyway is paramount for their conservation. Yet, the migratory life stage is understudied in many avian species. The Motus radiotelemetry receiver network is an established system for tracking survival and movement of avian species. This network is an international collaborative that successfully identifies stopover site duration, connected migratory routes, post-fledging dispersal and survival, and adult survival and fidelity on a landscape-scale; parameters that cannot be easily estimated using non-tagged birds. While the Motus network is highly connected in eastern North America, the western part of the continent is lagging in coverage and connectivity, limiting the ability to obtain sample sizes large enough to robustly model demographic parameters from tagged birds. Thus, the expansion of the Motus network is a high priority for Pacific Flyway State Agencies. To date, no method exists for determining priority locations for new Motus receiving stations. With collaborations from States and the Canadian Province of British Columbia, we used eBird citizen scientist data to prioritize strategic locations for new Motus receiving stations throughout the Pacific Flyway. We model priority species’ co-occupancy of varying abundance states (i.e., absent, present, abundant, abundant in multiple weeks) with spatially varying Landsat (red and near infrared), water, land cover types, and weather covariates while accounting for variable detection with temporally varying survey effort covariates. Using occupancy model predictions, we identify high-use areas of the Pacific Flyway for establishing new Motus receiving towers that have high probabilities of intercepting high presence and /or abundance of multiple species of interest in a series of predictive occupancy maps. This package contains all the necessary files to recreate the data analysis, print out maps based on predictions from the model, and conduct new analyses for the state of New Mexico.

解决太平洋迁徙路线上受关注的重点候鸟物种的生存与移动问题，对其保护至关重要。然而，许多鸟类的迁徙阶段研究仍显不足。Motus无线电遥测接收网络（Motus radiotelemetry receiver network）是一套成熟的鸟类生存与移动追踪系统。该国际合作网络能成功识别中途停留站点持续时间、连通的迁徙路线、雏鸟离巢后扩散与生存（post-fledging dispersal and survival）、以及景观尺度上的成鸟生存与忠诚度等参数——这些参数通过未标记鸟类难以准确估计。尽管Motus网络在北美东部的连通性极强，但北美大陆西部的覆盖与连通性仍存在不足，这限制了获取足够样本量以建立可靠种群统计参数（demographic parameters）模型的能力。因此，扩展Motus网络是太平洋迁徙路线州级机构的优先事项。目前尚无确定新Motus接收站优先位置的方法。通过与美国各州及加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省（British Columbia）合作，我们利用eBird公民科学家数据，为太平洋迁徙路线上的新Motus接收站确定了战略优先位置。我们构建的模型考虑了优先物种在不同丰度状态（缺席、存在、丰富、多周丰富）下的共占率，结合空间变化的Landsat数据（红波段与近红外波段）、水资源、土地覆盖类型及天气协变量（covariates），同时纳入随时间变化的调查努力协变量以校正检测差异。基于占用模型（occupancy model）的预测结果，我们识别出太平洋迁徙路线上的高利用区域，这些区域具有拦截多种目标物种高存在率和/或高丰度的高概率，据此可生成一系列预测占用地图（predictive occupancy maps）。本数据包包含所有必要文件，可用于重现数据分析、打印基于模型预测的地图，以及针对新墨西哥州开展新的分析。