Abstracts

Abstracts

TITLE?

Investigators: Kathyrn Schneider

Funding:

Expected Completion:

The first year of The New York Natural Heritage Program’s Hudson River Biodiversity Inventory is nearing completion. The study area consists of the non-tidal uplands in the towns bordering the Hudson River from the Troy Dam, in the North, to the Verranzo Bridge, in the South. The 1997 season included a historical review and field inventories documenting the locations and status of rare plant and animal species and rare and exemplary natural communities. Many plant and animal records were updated, new discoveries were made, and over thirty new communities were documented. Hotspots for biodiversity include the Hudson Highlands; the rich limestone, shale, and sandstone areas of Greene, Ulster, and Dutchess Counties; and Staten Island, where many species and communities find their northern range limits. The results from 1997, as well as information previously entered into the Natural Heritage database, will be summarized and analyzed in an interim report by March 31, 1998. Field inventories are being planned for the 1998 field season with a final report due on March 31, 1999.

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Use of a Geographic Information System in the New York Important Bird Area Program

Investigators: Charles R. Smith and Joseph T. Weber (and ?? MER, Bob Miller, Jeff Wells)

Funding: National Audubon Society

Expected Completion: ?? 30 March 1998 ??

The primary purpose of the geographic information system component of the Important Bird Areas (IBA) program is to identify areas that contain specific assemblages of endangered, threatened, and special concern bird species. These assemblages were derived by grouping birds in accordance with their habitat affinities. Maps for 21 assemblages have been produced and currently are being examined, including: Vespar Sparrow and Horned Lark; Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl; Red-shouldered Hawk and (include more assemblages?)(8/21 shown) Cerulean Warbler; Upland Sandpiper; Grasshopper Sparrow; Bobolink, Savannah Sparrow and Sedge Wren; Least Bittern, American Bittern and Black Tern; Whip-poor-will, Prairie Warbler and Brown Thrasher. The next step will be to overlay these maps with state and federal lands to confirm current data and to identify potential IBA’s. The IBA projects is a cooperative effort of the NY Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), and National Audubon Society (NAS). NYSDEC has provided the Breeding Bird Atlas database, the principal source of data for this project, and has collaborated on several other aspects of the project including development of the species assemblages. NAS has provided coordinates for areas that have been nominated to become IBA’s by Audubon chapters, bird clubs, natural resource managers, and others.

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Asessment of Reptile and Amphibian Species Richness in New York as Influenced by Mapping Unit

Investigators: Milo E. Richmond, Joseph T. Weber, Alvin R. Breisch (NYSDEC), John W. Ozard (NYSDEC), and Charles R. Smith

Funding: National Gap Analysis Project

Expected completion: 30 September 1998

The following abstract is for a poster that was presented at the 7^th Annual Gap Analysis Principal Investigators’ Meeting, Reston, VA; the 13^th Annual New York State Geographic Information Systems Conference, Albany, NY; and the Annual Meeting of the New York Chapter of the Wildlife Society, Buffalo, NY.

In 1990, the Endangered Species Unit of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) began an ambystomid salamander survey which was successfully transformed into the New York Amphibian Reptile Atlas Project. The goal of the Atlas Project is to document the occurrences and distributions of all species of herpetofauna living wild in New York by 1999. The New York Endangered Species Unit has collaborated extensively with the Cooperative Research Unit in the NY Gap Analysis effort and has provided approximately 21,000 reported individual observations of reptiles and amphibians for use in completion of the Gap effort. The purpose of this poster is to recognize this collaboration and to display and discuss this dataset in light of different mapping methods, mapping units, and species aggregates. Summaries of these data based upon a standard grid improve the investigator’s ability to compare species richness and distribution across the entire state and the uniform grid better represents the actual species distribution in areas such as northern New York where townships are quite large, thereby suggesting a higher species diversity than may actually exist. Analysis of these data on the 64 species of amphibians and reptiles and indigenous to New York confirms a reporting bias and points out the need for greater survey effort in other areas of the state. The positive side of this observation is that we now expect species gains in the remaining blocks awaiting systematic survey and we also know where to target future survey efforts. The New York State Amphibian and Reptile Atlas project has made great strides in characterizing and drawing attention to this important group. Current Gap Analysis research is adding to the effort to further delineate and display this rich heritage of amphibians and reptiles in New York..

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Development of Maps of Known and Predicted Mammalian Distributions for the New York Gap Analysis Project

Investigators: Joseph T. Weber, Milo E. Richmond, and Charles R. Smith

Funding: National Gap Analysis Project

Expected Completion: 30 September 1998

One major objective of Gap Analysis is to identify areas of high biodiversity that are not currently protected or managed primarily for maintaining native species and natural ecosystems. Identification of such areas is accomplished by comparing maps of the distributions of vegetation types, terrestrial vertebrates and butterflies with maps of land stewardship and management status. This poster details the process by which maps of known and predicted mammalian distributions in New York are being developed for the New York Gap Analysis Project. We obtained mammalian data in the form of museum records, game harvest records, and rabies specimen reports. These data are compared in terms of species coverage, spatial coverage, temporal coverage, data credibility, and data volume. Because of the age of some of these data (e.g. 1850’s) makes them unsuitable for representing the current distribution of mammals in New York, we used a history of land-use change in the process of deciding which data are too old to be useful for distribution map development. After this temporal analysis, acceptable data were used to produce known distribution maps for native mammals. The known distributions were used in conjunction with habitat relation models, which link species to habitat characteristics such as vegetation and elevation, to produce maps of predicted distribution. Predicted distributions for selected species are illustrated. In further development of the Gap Analysis process, the predicted distribution maps will be subjected to review by mammal experts, and appropriate edits will be made to create the final distribution maps. Final distribution maps will be compared with maps of the distributions of vegetation types, other terrestrial vertebrates, and butterflies for assessment of overall biodiversity in New York.

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