Waterfowl & Wetlands Literature Review

Studying waterfowl with large extant datasets is intimidating because I often have the sneaking suspicion “someone has done this before.” I’m in the process of figuring out which of my suspicions are correct.

• Are there more ducks where there are more wetlands in the surrounding landscape? If so, what scale is relevant to predict waterfowl abundance (e.g. are there more waterfowl when the 10km surrounding them have more wetlands)?
  • No…
    • duck abundance on a given pond is lower when there are more wetlands in the surrounding landscape (Bartzen et al. 2017)
      • The Waterfowl Breeding Population and Habitat Survey (WBPHS) 1993-2002
      • Canadian PPR
      • generalized least-squares regression models
      • compound symmetry covariance structure to account for repeated annual counts on ponds
      • AIC model selection

Literature Cited

Bartzen, B., Dufour, K. W., Bidwell, M. T., Watmough, M. D. and Clark, R. G. (2017), Relationships between abundances of breeding ducks and attributes of Canadian prairie wetlands. Wildl. Soc. Bull., 41: 416–423. doi:10.1002/wsb.794