Wetland bird case study for application of habitat association models across Great Lakes and Prairie Pothole regions

Abstract

Species often exhibit regionally specific habitat associations, and, thus, habitat association models developed in one region might not be accurate or even appropriate for other regions. Three programs to survey wetland-breeding birds covering (respectively) North American wetland breeding bird survey programs in Great Lakes coastal wetlands, inland Great Lakes wetlands, and the Prairie Pothole Region offer an opportunity to test whether regionally specific models of habitat use by wetland-obligate breeding birds are transferrable across regions. This dataset includes wetland bird point count and habitat characteristics data from the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program (2016-2017) and Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring Program (1995-1997 and 2016-2017). These data are then combined with publicly available data from the Dakotas Wetland Survey (1995-1997). The included code files cover the creation and selection of habitat association models, and test the transferability of these models across datasets. These data are now released to accompany publication of "Application of habitat association models across regions: useful explanatory power retained in wetland bird case study."