MSA: Macro-Demography of North America's Migratory Avifauna

扭转全球生物多样性丧失的趋势是我们这个时代的主要挑战，然而，物种减少的原因往往鲜为人知。鸟类就是这场危机的例证，北美大陆目前养育的鸟类比1970年减少了30亿只。候鸟受到的打击尤其严重。这些鸟在它们的越冬地和繁殖地之间长途跋涉，很难准确地确定哪里存在威胁，哪里应该专注于保护工作。为了了解目前鸟类的减少，研究人员需要对他们访问的广阔地理区域内鸟类的出生和死亡率进行准确的估计。然而，这种信息目前只在一年中很短的时间内提供给几个选定的地点。这项研究将通过开发新的工具来测量整个大陆和全年鸟类的出生和死亡率，以应对这些挑战。这些努力产生的洞察力将帮助研究人员了解哪些因素导致了人口下降。特别是，研究人员将调查热浪和寒流等极端气候事件如何影响出生率和死亡率。解释鸟类种群数量的这种年复一年的变化，将是理解鸟类长期下降的关键一步。通过深入了解如何阻止鸟类的持续损失，这项工作旨在维持鸟类为人类和环境提供的至关重要的生态、经济和社会服务。为了创建他们的新分析，研究人员将依靠三种新的“大数据”资源来跟踪全年的鸟类数量。首先，美国天气雷达网(NEXRAD)将用于研究秋季和春季移民流入和流出北美的情况。比较相邻季节的这些数字将使研究人员能够估计所有候鸟的出生和死亡率总和。其次，将使用数十万志愿公民科学家的观测(eBird数据)和动态物种分布模型来跟踪记录的鸟类数量的季节性变化。这一资源将捕捉雷达数据中无法获得的物种特定模式。第三，遥感数据和国家生态观测网(NEON)将被用来了解温度和物候极端，这将作为驱动种群变化的机制进行探索。总体而言，这项研究旨在开发工具来了解当前的数量下降，并指出恢复和保护鸟类大规模迁徙的路线图。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Reversing the global loss of biodiversity is a primary challenge of our time, however the reasons for species declines are often poorly understood. Birds exemplify this crisis, with the North American continent supporting 3 billion fewer birds today than in 1970. Migratory birds are particularly hard hit. These birds travel vast distances between their wintering and breeding grounds, making it difficult to pinpoint where threats exist and where conservation efforts should be focused. To understand current bird declines, researchers require accurate estimates of the birth and death rates of birds across the vast geographic areas they visit. However, such information is currently only available for a few select locations during short periods of the year. This research will address these challenges by developing novel tools to measure the birth and death rates of birds across an entire continent and throughout the whole year. The insights generated by these efforts will help researchers to understand which factors have been causing population declines. In particular, researchers will investigate how extreme climatic events such as heat waves and cold spells have affected birth and death rates. Explaining such year-to-year changes in bird populations sizes will be a critical step towards understanding long-term bird declines. By gaining insight into how to halt ongoing bird losses, this work aims to sustain the vital ecological, economic, and social services that birds provide to humans and the environment. To create their new analyses, researchers will rely on three novel ‘big data’ resources to track bird populations throughout the year. First, the US weather radar network (NEXRAD) will be used to study the flow of migrants into and out of North America during fall and spring migration. Comparing these numbers between adjacent seasons will enable researchers to estimate the birth and death rates of all migratory birds combined. Second, observations from hundreds of thousands of volunteer citizen scientists (eBird data) and dynamic species distribution models will be used to track seasonal variation in the numbers of birds recorded. This resource will capture species-specific patterns that are not available from the radar data. Third, remote sensing data and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will be used to understand temperature and phenological extremes, which will be explored as a mechanism driving population changes. Overall, this research aims to develop the tools to understand current population declines and point towards a road map for the recovery and conservation of the mass migration of birds.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.