SPATIAL REPRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF BREEDING BIRD COUNT ON THE NATIONAL FORESTS IN ALABAMA

The USDA Forest Service’s Southern Region National Forests, including the National Forests in Alabama (NFsAL), have been conducting breeding bird point counts for 25 years. While population trends and habitat occurrence information have been compiled for the 14 forests, including the NFsAL, no comprehensive analysis of the bird data has been examined at the scale of the Forest or Districts for the NFsAL. We examined the 444 NFsAL bird points that have been surveyed each spring to examine bird species presence, diversity, and abundance and to determine if there is a relationship with climate and vegetation data using a geospatially and statistical explicit model. The findings from our work will help to provide pragmatic GIS products that can be used by district biologists and others in their forest management and restoration decisions.