MAPS Demographic Bird Monitoring at Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks

The Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird monitoring program was established in Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks in the early 1990s, and the parks now host some of the longest-running MAPS stations in the country.

The Yosemite and Kings Canyon MAPS stations, cooperatively run by The Institute for Bird Populations and National Park Service personnel, monitor the population dynamics and demography of over 25 target bird species that inhabit the parks’ montane meadows during spring and summer. In addition to contributing to the larger-scale MAPS program, the Yosemite and Kings Canyon MAPS stations yield important findings and new hypotheses about landbird population dynamics in the parks. Preliminary findings that emerge from MAPS results can then be followed up with targeted research. A recent example of this monitoring-research cycle is that MAPS results from Yosemite suggested disturbing declines in the park’s Willow Flycatcher population, prompting an intensive research project that yielded an important research publication on causes of decline in the species.

The Yosemite and Kings Canyon MAPS stations are also well-suited to studying the effects of annual weather variation and climate change on birds, and this will be an important focus of our next major analytical report for the Yosemite MAPS program, which is slated to be completed in early 2011.

For more information about the MAPS program in Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks, contact Rodney Siegel.

Below: Birds capured, banded, and released at Yosemite and Kings Canyon MAPS stations.

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