Northeast Temperate Network acoustic analyses in support of wildlife community monitoring

Project Description: Eastern forests face a range of interacting stressors:novel pests and pathogens, invasive plant dominance, over-abundant white-tailed deer populations, development of surrounding non-NPS lands, altered disturbance regimes, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and changing climate conditions. Meanwhile, there is a diversity of wildlife inhabiting these forests that are also being impacted. The impacts of these stressors on wildlife may be negative, neutral, or positive depending on the specific
habitat requirements of these organisms. Collectively, these threats and stressors can result in changes to park biodiversity over time that may result in increased operational costs for parks to protect park habitats and wildlife populations

This project will support a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell
University’s bioacoustics lab to conduct analyses to improve acoustic monitoring of landbirds, which is being conducted to supplement Northeast Temperate Inventory and Monitoring Network’s (NETN) long-term monitoring forest bird monitoring program. The postdoc will process and analyze recordings from NETNís long term sites to assess and improve the accuracy of the classifiers (e.g., BirdNET) for detecting forest breeding species. The postdoc will also lead and contribute to the development of scientific
manuscripts and reports resulting from the work to improve our evaluation of the status and trends of breeding forest birds in NETN parks. The resulting analyses and products from this project will increase public and the scientific community’s knowledge of how avariety of local and regional stressors affect the condition of park wildlife and will provide
practical outcomes that parks and supporting programs can utilize in their planning and management of forest and wildlife resources.

Lead Principal Investigator: Dr. Laurel Symes, Cornell University

Partner Institution: Cornell University

Federal Agency: National Park Service

Federal Agency Technical Contact: Jim Comiskey

Start Year: 2024

End Year: 2026

Initial Funding Amount: $129,383.95

Federal Grant Number: P24AC02415

Products Associated with this Project:

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