Environmental monitoring using populations of birds and small mammals: Analyses of sampling effort

Abstract

Characteristics of bird and small mammal communities can be valuable in monitoring for impacts on specific plots of land. In Utah (USA), significant differences were found among years, habitats and seasons in bird and small mammal abundance, species diversity, and species richness; thus, estimates of these characteristics are consistent and repeatable and can be used for detecting change. Also, bird and small mammal communities are dependent on a wide variety of food resources and habitat characteristics; thus they should reflect a variety of impacts. A comparison is made between two methods of handling bird data from transects: enumeration (individual birds per km) and density (birds per unit area). Correlation between the two was high ( r = 0·93). However, density estimates may be necessary to trace an impact to a particular group, guild or species and possibly to its cause. An analysis is made of how much sampling is necessary to make an adequate estimate of the characteristics of bird and small mammal communities. Estimates of bird abundance, species richness and species diversity (from enumeration) may be obtained with three repetitions of 2 km of transect. Three repetitions are also sufficient to estimate abundance of small mammals on 12 by 12 trapping grids. To estimate species richness and species diversity, however, four or more repetitions are needed. Small mammal community characteristics are not well predicted by trapping on transects or small grids except in grids 9 by 9 or larger. These results of sampling effort may only apply to certain habitats but data from bird and small mammal communities should be useful in environmental monitoring at any site.