Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park Landbird Community Monitoring

National Park Service Kennesaw Mountain U.S. Department of the Interior

Inventory and Monitoring Division National Battlefield Park Southeast Coast Network Landbird Community Monitoring, 2012 Overview Birds play critical roles in park ecosystems. They occupy and interact with several trophic levels of the food web and serve as both predator and prey. Because many bird species have been extensively studied, their presence in our parks provides insight on the condition of specific habitat components.

Monitoring long-term trends within breeding-bird populations provides a measure for assessing the ecological integrity and sustainability of southeastern ecosystems. The composition, richness, diversity, and distribution of bird communities provide substantial insight into the ecological condition of park resources. Information about the landbird community also provides derivative information about other characteristics of the park and surrounding area (e.g., vegetation community types, extent of fragmentation).

Continued human population growth and land conversion, combined with documented population declines in many species during the last several decades, increases the importance of national park areas as some of the few remaining protected areas in which diverse populations of birds can exist.

Study Area Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, a 2,923-acre Figure 1. Location of landbird community monitoring sites at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in 2012. (1,183-hectare) park in the metropolitan Atlanta area, includes the 1,808-foot (551-meter) peak of Kennesaw Mountain, Little Significant Findings Kennesaw Mountain, and hundreds of acres of mixed hardwood/ • Automated recording devices collected bird detection data (i.e., pine forests intermixed with a number of grassy fields (Figure 1). presence/absence) from 28 of the 30 spatially balanced random Forested areas generally consist of oaks, hickories (Carya spp.), and locations at the park. loblolly pine. Included are more than 22 miles (35.4 kilometers) of designated hiking trails that attract hundreds of recreational visitors • Approximately 1,600 minutes of recordings were collected daily. May–June and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. Largely because of its proximity to Atlanta, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park experiences major threats to its natural • Sixty-two species of birds were detected. resources. The development of Cobb County and greater metro • One non-native species, house finch, was detected during the Atlanta makes the lands within Kennesaw Mountain a haven for sampling effort. localized plant and animal communities. Expansion of roads and highways that traverse the park poses a potential threat • Northern cardinal, Carolina wren, tufted titmouse, blue jay, to both cultural and natural resources. Air pollution is also of white-breasted nuthatch, Carolina chickadee, pine warbler, and concern within the park, which is located in a designated ozone red-bellied woodpecker were the most frequently occurring nonattainment area. Vegetation in the park is considered at high and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at 80% or more risk of injury from ozone. Additionally, there are minor threats from of all sampling locations). American crow was also widely encroachment of adjacent landowners, non-native invasive plant distributed across the park, occurring at 70% of all sampling species, and industrial air and water pollution. locations.

Despite many of these threats, Kennesaw Mountain NBP is a major • The full dataset, and associated metadata, can be acquired from stopover and breeding site for many species of neotropical and the NPS data store at the Integrated Resource Management Applications portal (https://irma.nps.gov/App/Portal/Home). resident birds. Science, Stewardship, Solutions September 2016 Sampling Methods About the Southeast Coast Network

A point count is the typical technique used to monitor landbirds, In 1999, the National Park Service initiated a long-term ecological where the majority of species are identified based on their monitoring program, known as “Vital Signs Monitoring,” to provide vocalizations rather than visual identification. Automated recording the minimum infrastructure to allow more than 270 national park devices (ARDs) mimic this technique, but create a permanent system units to identify and implement long-term monitoring of record that can be methodically evaluated in a lab setting and their highest-priority measurements of resource condition. The independently verified by several observers to ensure all vocalizing overarching purpose of natural resource monitoring in parks species are identified. is to develop scientifically sound information on the status and long-term trends in the composition, structure, and function of park ecosystems and to determine how well current management ARDs can be programmed to record multiple events during one practices are sustaining those ecosystems. deployment, thus eliminating the need for and costs associated with return visits by field personnel. The devices are programmed with The NPS Vital Signs Monitoring Program addresses five goals for all a precise schedule corresponding to the time of day when birds are parks with significant natural resources: the most vocal and therefore most likely to be detected. • Determine the status and trends in selected indicators of the The network deploys ARDs for 77 days from March/April to June condition of park ecosystems, and collects two 12-minute recordings every five days at 7:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. Five monitoring events within the May to mid-June • Provide early warning of abnormal conditions, window (peak of breeding season) with the lowest background noise levels are selected for evaluation for each sampling location. • Provide data to better understand the dynamic nature and condition of park ecosystems, An experienced observer manually examines each recording, identifying all vocalizing landbirds. Data were collected at 28 • Provide data to meet certain legal and congressional mandates, sampling locations at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and in 2012 (Figure 1). • Provide a means of measuring progress toward performance goals.

The Southeast Coast Network includes 20 parks, 17 of which contain significant and diverse natural resources. In total, SECN parks encompass more than 184,000 acres of federally-managed land across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The parks span a wide diversity of cultural missions, as they include four national seashores, two national historic sites, two national memorials, seven national monuments, and two national military parks, as well as a national recreation area, a national battlefield, and an ecological and historic preserve. The park units range in size from slightly more than 20 to nearly 60,000 acres, and, when considered with non-federal lands jointly managed with NPS, the Southeast Coast Network encompasses more than 253,000 acres.

For More Information SECN Home Page: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/secn/index.cfm

About the NPS Inventory & Monitoring Division: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/index.cfm

Data Downloads via the Natural Resource Information Portal: Figure 2. Ruby-crowned kinglet (Regulus calendula). Photo courtesy of Rachel Holzman. http://irma.nps.gov

Science, Stewardship, Solutions