Progress 08/16/19 to 09/15/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience is USFS, wildlife managers generally, and the public. We worked closely with the USFS to design the prescribed burn study in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 (which was cancelled due to covid, see note below). We also initiated a large scale community science project to examine the effects of changing pollution levels on birds (we did this in response to covid 19). We have presented preliminary results at the Annual Wildlife Society Meeting, which targets researchers, practitioners, and managers for wildlife. And finally, see below (under other products and outreach) for public presentations and media articles citing our work on wildfire smoke effects on birds. Changes/Problems:This study was anticipated to have fall and spring prescribed burn experiments in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. Fall 2019 proved to not be a good time for prescribed burns and our partners at USFS only carried out a few small burns, which we targeted with our sampling design, but these small burns did not provide much variation in smoke across our sampling. In Spring 2020, covid impacted the burn schedule and we were unable to carry out any field work (prescribed burns continued to be limited through 2021) The data from the Fall 2019 prescribed burns has been analyzed to look at smoke effects on calling rates of birds and detections of mammals; however, the air quality measured in the area showed very little change (and the worst air quality days are not during prescribed burns). Thus the first season of data are not conclusive and covid prevented us from being able to achieve our second objective: Determine the direct effect of smoke exposure on wildlife movement, behavior, and habitat use as health indictors following prescribed burns. Given this unforeseen pandemic, we have altered our plans and are now focusing on objective 1 and are including more data in this aspect of the project. We have expanded the project to include not only camera trapping, but also acoustic recording at sites across forest service lands. We had planned to do acoustic recordings in the prescribed burn study, so we expanded to have acoustic recorders at 200 sites in Eastern and Central Washington. We are also including data from collared animals in Eastern Washington to determine if there are movement or behavior changes related to smoke events. These data are being collected as part of the predator-prey project but we have been given permission to use them for this analysis. Since field work for the prescribed burn was not possible, we also took two other actions. One, we wrote a literature review on the effects of wildfire smoke on wildlife that was published in 2021. Two, we started a large (>400) community science project to look at how birds across Washington responded to changes in the environment as a result of Covid-19. We expected changes in PM2.5 (the main pollutant we were looking at in the smoke study) as a result of reduced human activities. We did not see this response in PM2.5 in Washington, but the study is none-the-less very interesting. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has included training and/or support for 3 graduate students. Each student is developing their own research skills and this project has provide an opportunity for them to continue to build collaboration skills, field research skills, professional communication and writing, scientific research skills, and advancing in their degrees. Two of the graduate students (O. Sanderfoot and S. Bassing) worked closely with research partners including the USFS and WDFW. All three students attended and presented at the Annual Meeting of the Wildlife Society in 2019 and participated in professional development workshops. O. Sanderfoot attended the AAAS Annual Meeting in 2019, attended the Joint meeting of the American Ornithological Society in 2021. R. Emmet (virtually) attended and presented at the International Statistical Ecology Conference in July 2020. O. Sanderfoot and R. Emmet both developed skills in teaching by serving as teaching assistants at UW. R. Emmet and O. Sanderfoot both have successfully defended their Ph.D.s. R. Emmet and B. Gardner supervised an undergraduate research project using the camera trap data from this study looking at the effects of smoke on animal activity. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Yes, we have published 2 peer-reviewed paper. We have also presented results at numerous meetings including professional meetings (international, national, and local) as well as meetings for the public. Aside from the above professional presentations, here is a list of other public talks: O. V. Sanderfoot*. Wildlife ecology in the Pacific Northwest. November 23, 2021. Sustaining Pacific Northwest Ecosystems, University of Washington School of Environmental & Forest Sciences. Seattle, WA. (Guest Lecture) O. V. Sanderfoot*. Birding for Cleaner Skies: Leveraging community science to learn about how air pollution impacts birds. May 25th, 2021. Sun Prairie Rotary Club. Sun Prairie, WI. (Public Lecture) O. V. Sanderfoot*. Tuning Into Birdsong: The science and solace of birding. May 11th, 2021. Music, Birdsong, and the Limits of the Human, University of Washington School of Music. Seattle, WA. (Guest Lecture) There has a been a lot of press about our papers and study as well including citations and references in National Geographic, Discover Magazine, Popular Science, NPR, etc. October 20, 2021. How does wildfire smoke affect wildlife? Here's what we know. National Geographic. September 13, 2021. What Scientists Know About Wildfire Smoke and Its Impact on Wild Animal Health. Discover Magazine. July 12, 2021. Detecting birds amidst the smoke. The Wildlife Society. July 8, 2021. Seattle Now: It's easy to be a bird nerd. KUOW. July 7, 2021. Study: How smoke affects birds in Washington ... and our ability to see them. KNKX. July 5, 2021. Wildfire smoke impacts what birds we see, hear according to UW study. The Spokesman-Review. June 29, 2021. When the wildfire smoke arrives, where do the birds go? UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. June 29, 2021. Air pollution from wildfires impacts ability to observe birds. UW News. May 26, 2021. How birds in the Pacific Northwest experienced the pandemic. Crosscut. September 22, 2020. Birding: Smoky days were here again, and affecting birds. The Chinook Observer. September 21, 2020. Raptors and Smoke: Exploring impacts of air pollution on birds. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. September 17, 2020. SEFS Ph.D. student talks birds, smoke in Seattle Times. UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Newsroom. September 18, 2020. Thousands of dying birds out West could reveal an even bigger environmental tragedy. Popular Science. September 18, 2020. Mass mortality in the southern Rockies: Smoke, climate change, and bird migration. BirdCast. September 17, 2020. Seattle is in smoke. What's happening to the birds? The Seattle Times. September 11, 2020. As Wildfire Smoke Blots Out the Sun in Northern California, Many Ask: `Where Are the Birds?' Inside Climate News. September 11, 2020. How wildfires impact birds. Audubon Magazine. Due to covid-19 changing our field plans (see below) and given the unique opportunity that the pandemic posed, we initiated a community science project to evaluate the effects of changes in pollution (due to regional lockdowns and shifts to working from home) on bird observations. This community science effort resulted in over 400 people volunteering to conduct bird point counts weekly during spring 2020 and 2021 (http://depts.washington.edu/sefsqel/effects-of-social-distancing-on-backyard-birds/). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We deployed, maintained, and moved 118 camera traps and acoustic recorders each year of 2020 and 2021. The camera work is part of the Washington Predator Prey project, which we expanded for this study to include acoustics information to inform our study of the effects of smoke on bird activity. Olivia Sanderfoot, Sarah Bassing, and Robbie Emmet all gave scientific presentations and attended wildlife conferences. We implemented a large community science project, which engaged over 400 members of the public and provided resources to better understand birds in Washington.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Gardner, B. 2021. Plenary speaker. Smoke on the water, a bird in the sky. National Centre for Statistical Ecology Annual
Conference.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Gardner, B. 2021. Invited speaker. Smoke on the water, fire in the sky: effects of wildfire smoke on wildlife. University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V. and Gardner, B. 2021. Wildfire smoke affects detection of birds in Washington State. Ornithological
Applications. 123(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithapp/duab028
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V., Bassing, S.B., Brusa, J.L., Emmet, R.L., Gillman, S.J., Swift, K., and Gardner, B. 2021. A review of the
effects of wildfire smoke on the health and behavior of wildlife. Environmental Research Letters. 16: 123003
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V., Kaufman, J.D., and Gardner, B. COVID-19 lockdowns affected detection of backyard birds and avian
habitat use in urban areas. In revision at Scientific Reports.
|
Progress 10/01/20 to 09/15/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience is USFS, wildlife managers generally, and the public. We worked closely with the USFS to design the prescribed burn study in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 (which was cancelled due to covid, see note below). We also initiated a large scale community science project to examine the effects of changing pollution levels on birds (we did this in response to covid 19). We have presented preliminary results at the Annual Wildlife Society Meeting, which targets researchers, practitioners, and managers for wildlife. And finally, see below (under other products and outreach) for public presentations and media articles citing our work on wildfire smoke effects on birds. Changes/Problems:This study was anticipated to have fall and spring prescribed burn experiments in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. Fall 2019 proved to not be a good time for prescribed burns and our partners at USFS only carried out a few small burns, which we targeted with our sampling design, but these small burns did not provide much variation in smoke across our sampling. In Spring 2020, covid impacted the burn schedule and we were unable to carry out any field work (prescribed burns continued to be limited through 2021) The data from the Fall 2019 prescribed burns has been analyzed to look at smoke effects on calling rates of birds and detections of mammals; however, the air quality measured in the area showed very little change (and the worst air quality days are not during prescribed burns). Thus the first season of data are not conclusive and covid prevented us from being able to achieve our second objective: Determine the direct effect of smoke exposure on wildlife movement, behavior, and habitat use as health indictors following prescribed burns. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has included training and/or support for 3 graduate students. Each student is developing their own research skills and this project has provide an opportunity for them to continue to build collaboration skills, field research skills, professional communication and writing, scientific research skills, and advancing in their degrees. Two of the graduate students (O. Sanderfoot and S. Bassing) worked closely with research partners including the USFS and WDFW. All three students attended and presented at the Annual Meeting of the Wildlife Society in 2019 and participated in professional development workshops. O. Sanderfoot attended the AAAS Annual Meeting in 2019, attended the Joint meeting of the American Ornithological Society in 2021. R. Emmet (virtually) attended and presented at the International Statistical Ecology Conference in July 2020. O. Sanderfoot and R. Emmet both developed skills in teaching by serving as teaching assistants at UW. R. Emmet and O. Sanderfoot both have successfully defended their Ph.D.s. R. Emmet and B. Gardner supervised an undergraduate research project using the camera trap data from this study looking at the effects of smoke on animal activity. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Yes, we have published 2 peer-reviewed paper. We have also presented results at numerous meetings including professional meetings (international, national, and local) as well as meetings for the public. Aside from the above professional presentations, here is a list of other public talks: O. V. Sanderfoot*. Wildlife ecology in the Pacific Northwest. November 23, 2021. Sustaining Pacific Northwest Ecosystems, University of Washington School of Environmental & Forest Sciences. Seattle, WA. (Guest Lecture) O. V. Sanderfoot*. Birding for Cleaner Skies: Leveraging community science to learn about how air pollution impacts birds. May 25th, 2021. Sun Prairie Rotary Club. Sun Prairie, WI. (Public Lecture) O. V. Sanderfoot*. Tuning Into Birdsong: The science and solace of birding. May 11th, 2021. Music, Birdsong, and the Limits of the Human, University of Washington School of Music. Seattle, WA. (Guest Lecture) There has a been a lot of press about our papers and study as well including citations and references in National Geographic, Discover Magazine, Popular Science, NPR, etc. October 20, 2021. How does wildfire smoke affect wildlife? Here's what we know. National Geographic. September 13, 2021. What Scientists Know About Wildfire Smoke and Its Impact on Wild Animal Health. Discover Magazine. July 12, 2021. Detecting birds amidst the smoke. The Wildlife Society. July 8, 2021. Seattle Now: It's easy to be a bird nerd. KUOW. July 7, 2021. Study: How smoke affects birds in Washington ... and our ability to see them. KNKX. July 5, 2021. Wildfire smoke impacts what birds we see, hear according to UW study. The Spokesman-Review. June 29, 2021. When the wildfire smoke arrives, where do the birds go? UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. June 29, 2021. Air pollution from wildfires impacts ability to observe birds. UW News. May 26, 2021. How birds in the Pacific Northwest experienced the pandemic. Crosscut. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We deployed, maintained, and moved 118 camera traps and acoustic recorders each year of 2020 and 2021. The camera work is part of the Washington Predator Prey project, which we expanded for this study to include acoustics information to inform our study of the effects of smoke on bird activity. Olivia Sanderfoot, Sarah Bassing, and Robbie Emmet all gave scientific presentations and attended wildlife conferences. We implemented a large community science project, which engaged over 400 members of the public and provided resources to better understand birds in Washington.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Gardner, B. 2021. Plenary speaker. Smoke on the water, a bird in the sky. National Centre for Statistical Ecology Annual Conference.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Gardner, B. 2021. Invited speaker. Smoke on the water, fire in the sky: effects of wildfire smoke on wildlife. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V. and Gardner, B. 2021. Wildfire smoke affects detection of birds in Washington State. Ornithological Applications. 123(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/ornithapp/duab028
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V., Bassing, S.B., Brusa, J.L., Emmet, R.L., Gillman, S.J., Swift, K., and Gardner, B. 2021. A review of the effects of wildfire smoke on the health and behavior of wildlife. Environmental Research Letters. 16: 123003
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V., Kaufman, J.D., and Gardner, B. COVID-19 lockdowns affected detection of backyard birds and avian habitat use in urban areas. In revision at Scientific Reports.
|
Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience is the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), wildlife managers generally, and the public.We worked closed with the USFS to design the prescribed burn study in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 (which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic--see note below). We have presented preliminary results at the Annual Wildlife Society Meeting, which targets researchers, practitioners, and managers for wildlife. And finally, see below (under "Outreach") for media articles citing our preliminary work on smoke effects on birds. Changes/Problems:This study was anticipated to have fall and spring prescribed burn experiments in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. Fall 2019 proved to not be a good time for prescribed burns and our partners at USFS only carried out a few small burns, which we targeted with our sampling design, but these small burns did not provide much variation in smoke across our sampling. In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the burn schedule and we were unable to carry out any field work (this is also true of Fall 2020, but that is beyond the current reporting period). The data from the Fall 2019 prescribed burns has been analyzed to look at smoke effects on calling rates of birds and detections of mammals; however, the air quality measured in the area showed very little change (and the worst air quality days were not during prescribed burns). Thus the first season of data are not conclusive and now COVID has essentially prevented us from being able to achieve our second objective: Determine the direct effect of smoke exposure on wildlife movement, behavior, and habitat use as health indictors following prescribed burns. Given this unforeseen pandemic, we have altered our plans and are now focusing on Objective 1 and are including more data in this aspect of the project. We have expanded the project to include not only camera trapping, but also acoustic recording at sites across forest service lands. This will allow us to analyze bird calls in relation to wildfire smoke events. (We had planned to do acoustic recordings in the prescribed burn study). We are also including data from collared animals in Eastern Washington to determine if there are movement or behavior changes related to smoke events. These data are being collected as part of the predator-prey project but we have been given permission to use them for this analysis. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has included training and/or support for 3 graduate students. Each student is developing their own research skills and this project has provided an opportunity for them to continue to build collaboration skills, field research skills, professional communication and writing, scientific research skills, and advancing in their degrees. Two of the graduate students (O. Sanderfoot and S. Bassing) worked closely with research partners including the USFS and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). All three students attended and presented at the Annual Meeting of the Wildlife Society in 2019 and participated in professional development workshops. O. Sanderfoot attended the AAAS Annual Meeting. R. Emmet attended (virtually)and presented at the International Statistical Ecology Conference in July 2020. O. Sanderfoot and R. Emmet both developed skills in teaching by serving as teaching assistants at UW. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Due to the COVID-19 pandemic changing our field plans (see below) and given the unique opportunity that the pandemic posed, we initiated a community science project to evaluate the effects of changes in pollution (due to regional lockdowns and shifts to working from home) on bird observations. This community science effort resulted in about 800 people volunteering to conduct bird point counts weekly during spring 2020 (http://depts.washington.edu/sefsqel/effects-of-social-distancing-on-backyard-birds/). While this project was not directly related to our research here, Olivia Sanderfoot conducted a number of outreach events - trainings, seminars, media interviews, etc. that all lead to increased awareness of our work on wildfire smoke events on birds. This network, along with large wildfire events in 2020, led to Olivia being interviewed and quoted on a number of media sites. September 22, 2020.Birding: Smoky days were here again, and affecting birds. The Chinook Observer. September 21, 2020.Raptors and Smoke: Exploring impacts of air pollution on birds. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. September 17, 2020.SEFS Ph.D. student talks birds, smoke in Seattle Times. UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Newsroom. September 18, 2020.Thousands of dying birds out West could reveal an even bigger environmental tragedy. Popular Science. September 18, 2020.Mass mortality in the southern Rockies: Smoke, climate change, and bird migration. BirdCast. September 17, 2020.Seattle is in smoke. What's happening to the birds?The Seattle Times. September 11, 2020.As Wildfire Smoke Blots Out the Sun in Northern California, Many Ask: 'Where Are the Birds?'Inside Climate News. September 11, 2020.How wildfires impact birds. Audubon Magazine. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To meet our goals in the next reporting period, we expanded field work in Fall 2020 to capture potential effects of wildfires that occurred in late September (this field work falls under Objective 1 as there were no prescribed burns that we could target for Objective 2). During this next reporting period, we will focus on analyzing all the data collected during 2019 and 2020 from acoustic recorders, camera traps, and GPS collared animals and writing up 2 manuscripts based on this work. We will also submit one manuscript using eBird data to look at the effects of smoke on the detectability of birds.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During this reporting periodwe implemented a study in Fall 2019 around prescribed burns that established20 stations with acoustic recorders and camera traps in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. We have analyzed these data looking at 4 different sound indices and correlating those with air quality indices. Unfortunately, the prescribed burn season in Fall 2019 was limited in this region and we saw only small changes in PM2.5 (a measure of small particulate matter that increases with increasing smoke). Thus, the results of our Fall 2019 study are inconclusive. We also maintained 118 camera traps (approximately 50 on USFS lands) from summer 2019 to summer 2020 and then moved all of those cameras to new locations and deployed acoustic recorders at all the sites in summer 2020. This latter work is part of the Washington Predator Prey project, which we expanded for this study to include acoustics information to inform our study of the effects of smoke on bird activity.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Sanderfoot, O.V. and B. Gardner. 2019. Smoke Signals: How elevated particulate levels during the wildfire season impacted bird observations in Washington State. American Fisheries Society & The Wildlife Society Joint Conference. Reno, NV.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Gardner, B., S. B. Bassing, T. Ganz, L. Prugh, T. Roussin, O.V. Sanderfoot, L. Satterfield, and A.Wirsing. 2019. Smoke on the water, fire in the sky. American Fisheries Society & The Wildlife Society Joint Conference. Reno, NV.
|
Progress 08/16/19 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:We were going to purchase Purple Air sensors for monitoring air quality around prescribed burns. We had thought these sensors could be retrofitted easily for use in the field; however, this was not the case and we had to find someone to custom build cases and battery sources for the air quality sensors. This added extra cost and delayed us being able to monitor air quality at prescribed burns in the next reporting period. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One graduate student, Olivia Sanderfoot, started research during this reporting period. She worked approximately two weeks on the project and was able to start organizing the fall field season, including exploring possible air quality monitors appropriate for the study. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are planning to set up sampling stations around prescribed burns.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Nothing to report during this period.
Publications
|
|