HR: 09:15h
AN: H21I-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Climatic and hydrologic influences on wading bird foraging patterns in Everglades National Park
AU: * Kwon, H
EM: hk2273@columbia.edu
AF: Associate Research Scientist, Earth & Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, 918 Mudd, 500 W 120th Street, New York, NY 10025, United States
AU: Lall, U
EM: ula2@columbia.edu
AF: Professor, Earth & Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, 918 Mudd, 500 W 120th Street, New York, NY 10025, United States
AU: Engel, V
EM: vic_engel@nps.gov
AF: Hydrologist, National Park Service-South Florida Natural Resource CenterSW 304th Street, Homestead, FL 33030, United States
AB: A goal of the Everglades National Park (ENP) restoration project is to ensure that the ecological health of the ENP improves as a direct result of management activities. Achieving hydrologic targets through the proper timing and amount of releases from control structures is a first step in the management process. Significant climate and weather variations in the region influence the ability to make releases and also determine the ecological outcomes. An assessment of the relative impact of climate variations and water releases to ENP in determining ecological outcomes is consequently a key to the evaluation of the success or failure of any restoration plan. Seasonal water depths in ENP depend on managed surface water releases from control structures and on direct rainfall. Here we link wading bird foraging patterns – a fundamental aspect of Everglades' ecology – to hydrologic management and climate variability in the National Park. Our objective is multifold. First, we relate the water levels at P33 and Shark Slough to the synoptic hydrologic conditions. Second, we develop a statistical model relating water levels at a station in central Shark Slough (P33) to wading birds foraging patterns throughout ENP. We attempt to apply a Hierarchical Bayesian scheme to a time series of wading bird to provide an uncertainty distribution of the population over specified time periods given hydrologic condition. Third, we develop a set of hydrologic index derived by recorded water level at P33 for a use of the statistical model of wading birds as an input. Our study will focus on great egret and white ibis that are major species among wading birds in the ENP. The great egret and white ibis prediction predicted by the model using the proposed predictors exhibits strong correlation with the observed streamflow, with an correlation 0.8.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects (4802, 4902)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1874 Ungaged basins
DE: 1879 Watershed
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting