Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The Wetland and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research in radar ornithology. Specifically, there is a need to determine avifauna densities as detected by weather surveillance radar (WSR) and possibly supplemented with field methods (i.e., banding, surveys, portable radar) in relation to fence design and associated lighting along the US-Mexico border within the Lower Rio Grande Valley, TX. This opportunity will provide an avenue for assisting with the development of spatially explicit decision support tools that can address fundamental needs of USGS management partners for border wall mitigation, current and future habitat acquisition, restoration, and conservations efforts targeted at flying animals. Research Objectives: Recent research conducted by USGS-WARC scientists and partners has demonstrated the capacity of WSR and field methods to support management and conservation needs at multiple spatiotemporal scales. These demonstrations imply that WSR, especially when supplemented with field methods, can play a much larger role in providing science-based decision support tools for management partners, thereby creating a need to further develop the application and conservation value of WSR. Collaboration with CESU scientists is intended to provide a more fundamental perspective on the decisions that need to be addressed. In particular, more effort is needed to determine the densities of flying animals in relation to human development and associated artificial lighting at night. WSR has the ability to determine animal response to human development before and after construction, which provides an ideal study design to understand how animals may respond over time. For management partners, this would inform long-term management and conservation actions in relation to a border wall. These are the types of problems we wish to study in a collaborative partnership.