- Thursday, November 2, 2017
- 3:40 PM–4:30 PM
- North Hall 276
Stacy DeRuiter, Calvin College
Previous work on songbirds suggests that many species avoid noisy areas, and sometimes suffer adverse consequences if they stay. To get a broader perspective on this important conservation issue, I teamed with Prof Proppe (Biology) and Calvin students Amber Bingle, Michael Pontius and Matthew Link to work on the problem. We combined two large published datasets - from the MAPs program (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) and the US National Parks Service noise map - to assess noise levels and bird demographics across the continental United States. Using regression (with some modern refinements to be detailed in the talk), we found that diversity decreased with increasing noise, but other effects varied by species, and bird productivity trends did not always match abundance.
Refreshments precede the talk at 3:30 p.m. in NH 282.
