Nur, N., Herzog, M., Liu, L., Kelly, J. P., Evens, J. G., Stralberg, D., Warnock, N.
The Integrated Regional Wetland Monitoring Pilot Project (IRWM) seeks to address the fundamental resource management question, how does tidal marsh restoration affect ecological processes at different scales? IRWM is a collaborative project amongst more than 20 Principal Investigators representing many disciplines and many institutions. The project has focused on identifying patterns of spatial variation and temporal variation, and their interaction, with the ultimate goal of elucidating ecological processes operating in tidal marsh ecosystems. The Bird Team has applied these objectives to the study of birds and their ecosystems, in the context of tidal marsh ecosystems of the San Francisco Estuary, by working collaboratively with other IRWM teams. The bird team has studied heterogeneity at different geographic scales:
(1) the largest scale is an entire landscape, composed of numerous marshes interspersed among non-marsh habitat; this could be an entire region (e. G., San Pablo Bay)
(2) the next scale is at the level of the marsh; and includes comparisons among IRWM marsh sites
(3) the next smaller scale is within a marsh, i.e., sub-areas within a marsh (“sub-sites”), including areas corresponding to channels, adjacent mud flat, marsh plain, levees, ponds and pannes.
(4) the finest scale is that of the individual bird territory or home-range, which may be as small as 50 m across.
Heterogeneity at one scale may not lead to similar patterns of heterogeneity at a second scale. The complementary principle to heterogeneity is that of integration. Thus, we can ask, Over what spatial scales do birds integrate diversity in resources and over what temporal scales?
Technical Report
Nur, N., M. Herzog, L. Liu, J. P. Kelly, J. G. Evens, D. Stralberg, and N. Warnock. 2006. Integrated Regional Wetland Monitoring Pilot Project: Bird Team Data Report. Integrated Regional Wetland Monitoring Pilot Project (IRWM), California Bay Delta Authority Science Program.