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Diving Duck Abundance and Distribution on Lake St

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Diving Duck Abundance and Distribution on Lake St DIVING DUCK ABUNDANCE AND DISTRIBUTION ON LAKE ST. CLAIR AND WESTERN LAKE ERIE By Brendan T. Shirkey A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Fisheries and Wildlife 2012 ABSTRACT DIVING DUCK ABUNDANCE AND DISTRIBUTION ON LAKE ST. CLAIR AND WESTERN LAKE ERIE By Brendan T. Shirkey Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie are important migration staging areas for diving ducks including canvasbacks (Aythya valisineria), redheads (Aythya americana), and lesser and greater scaup (Aythya affinis and Aythya marila). The Michigan DNR has censused diving ducks on the United States portion of Lake St. Clair dating back to 1983, but in 2010 traditional surveys were expanded to cover all of Lake St. Clair and portions of western Lake Erie and distance sampling techniques were adopted in an effort generate statistical estimates of abundance. Furthermore, GPS locations were recorded for all flocks allowing for the development of spatial models to investigate the effects of environmental and anthropogenic variables on diving duck distribution. We found distance sampling techniques to be a viable option for estimating diving duck abundance as long as flock size is accounted for as a covariate affecting the detection function, and we were able to apply distance sampling methods to both spring and fall migration. Human disturbance (i.e., presence of boats) and environmental variables (i.e., water depth and plant species richness) were predictive of diving duck occurrence. Differences between spring and fall abundance and variables predictive of spring and fall occurrence may indicate diving ducks are adopting different landscape use strategies in fall compared to spring, and this may have significant implications for wetland conservation planning. DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my parents, Tom and Wanda Shirkey. Without my mother’s patience and my father’s guidance, I never would have learned the true value of a life spent outdoors. There is no doubt that hunting and fishing fostered the qualities that make me who I am, and it was their appreciation for all living things that drove me to pursue a career in conservation. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my parents, Tom and Wanda, and my sister Erin because without their support I never would have finished college in the first place. I would also like to thank the punter’s and staff at the Winous Point Marsh Conservancy not only for sharing in many of my most memorable hunting experiences but also for teaching me there is much to be learned outside the classroom. I thank my funding sources such as The Upper Mississippi River Great Lakes Region Joint Venture, The Michigan Division of Natural Resources, Michigan State University, The Safari Club and the Winous Point Marsh Conservancy. I will forever be indebted to all of these great organizations for their support. I thank John Simpson, Dave Sherman, and Jacob Gray for always lending an ear and some words of guidance to assist in making this project what I hope is a valuable contribution to the waterfowl community. I thank my fellow observers, Joe Robison, Ernie Kafcas, Mike Wegan, Ryan Boyer, Dusty Arsenoe, and Howie Singer for all the long and sometimes uneventful hours they spent in an airplane with me. I thank Dr. David Williams for his GIS support and Dr. Andrew Finley for his spatial statistics expertise. I also thank Dr. Dave Luukkonen and Dr. Scott Winterstein not only for the statistical support and guidance, but also for forcing me to develop the skills necessary to become a professional in wildlife management. I thank my pilots Derek Deruiter and Bob Anton; without them none of this work would have been possible. Lastly and most importantly, I thank my wife Kelly. Without her never ending patience, love, and understanding, this work would never have been completed. She iv volunteered to listen to countless practice presentations and was always willing to listen to me talk about ducks, which I assume must be rather boring for normal folks. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………viii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………….x CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Monitoring Diving Ducks During Migration on Lake St. Clair and Western Lake Erie………………………………………………………………..1 Importance of Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie…………………………1 Threats posed to diving ducks on the lower Great Lakes……………………..2 Importance and challenges of monitoring diving ducks during migration…...6 Research objectives and thesis organization………………………………….8 Literature Cited………………………………………………………………10 CHAPTER 2 Estimating Diving Duck Abundance During Migration Using Distance Sampling Techniques………………………………………………………..15 Introduction………………………………………………………………….15 Study area and methodology………………………………………………...17 Results……………………………………………………………………….23 Discussion …………………………………………………………………...33 Management Implications…………………………………………………..38 Appendices…………………………………………………………………..40 Literature Cited……………………………………………………………...64 CHAPTER 3 Spatial Modeling of Diving Duck Distributions on Lake St. Clair and Western Lake Erie…………………………………………………………………….......................68 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..68 Study area and methodology…………………………………………………71 Historical survey methods……............................................................71 Current survey methods………………………………………………72 Results………………………………………………………………………...76 Historical survey data………………………………………………...76 Current survey data…………………………………………………...77 Discussion…………………………………………………………………….90 Management Implications…………………………………………………….94 Appendices…………………………………………………………………....97 Literature cited………………………………………………………………..103 CHAPTER 4 Summary……………………………………………………………………………….107 Introduction……………………………………………………………………107 Research and Management Implications of Abundance Estimation and Spatial Modeling Techniques for Diving Ducks on Lake St. Clair and Western vi Lake Erie……………………………………………………………………….108 Literature Cited………………………………………………………………...115 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Pooled survey effort for Lake St. Clair, western Lake Erie, canvasbacks, redheads, and scaup during each of the 4 migration time frames……………24 Table 2. Survey date, truncation distance (w), number of observations before and after truncation (n), model selected for abundance estimation, p-value obtained from chi-square goodness-of-fit test, detection probability, coefficient of variation for the abundance estimate and model weight for individual surveys conducted over Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie………………………………………..27 Table 3. Area or species of interest, number of observations before and after truncation (n), model selected for analysis, p-value from chi-square goodness-of-fit test, detection probability, coefficient of variation for abundance estimates and model weight for (a) Fall 2010, (b) Spring 2011, (c) Fall 2011, and (d) Spring 2012 pooled analyses………………………………………………………………28 Table 4. Survey date, 95% lower confidence limit (N LCL), abundance estimate (N), and 95% upper confidence limit (NUPL) for all individual surveys conducted on Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie during the two year study. Confidence limits obtained for all surveys that included cluster size as a covariate were estimated via the bootstrap option in Distance 6.0………………………………………30 Table 5. Survey date, ocular estimate, distance based estimate, and area covered for flocks containing > 10,000 individuals observed during the two year study…32 Table 6. Candidate models examined prior to selection of models used to perform (a) individual surveys and (b) pooled analyses. We did not consider models for either set of analyses that did not include clustersize as a covariate except for the default hazard rate and half normal models because we were uncomfortable with the regression method for estimating average flock size. We also did not include observer as a covariate for pooled analyses because we had very few observations (>10) per area or species of interest for some observers………………………..42 Table 7. Survey date, the number of censused large groups (>10,000 birds), and the ocular estimate of the number of individuals contained in those large groups….63 Table 8. Migration period and corresponding percent of sites occupied by diving ducks and recreational boats on Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie. Total sites on Lake St. Clair were 820 in Fall 2010 and 1025 in all other migration periods, and total sites on Lake Erie were 448 in Fall 2010 and 560 in all other migration periods (see Appendix A for % cells occupied by individual date)……………77 viii Table 9. Migration season, survey date, 50% Bayesian quantiles (50% b), and empirical standard deviations (SD) for the intercept, presence of boats, distance to shore, water depth, and plant species richness covariates from hierarchical spatial models predicting diving duck presence on Lake St. Clair (* denotes statistical significance based on Bayesian criterion where the 95% credibility intervals for the posterior distributions of the parameters did not include 0; see Appendix B for Bayesian credibility intervals and parameter estimates for the spatial random effects)………………………………………………………………………83 Table 10. Averaged Bayesian parameter estimates ( B ˆ ) and associated 95% confidence limits from hierarchical spatial models predicting diving duck occurrence for Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, and Spring 2012 on Lake St. Clair. Confidence limits were calculated with empirical standard deviations and methods outlined by Thompson
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