Each summer we participate in the MAPS program coordinated by The Institute for Bird Populations (IBP). MAPS is a continent-wide collaborative effort among government agencies, nonprofits, and research groups to help conserve birds and their habitats through bird banding.
MAPS stands for ‘monitoring avian productivity and survivorship’. Bird banders that participate in MAPS collect data that is used to determine population trends of individual bird species. This information helps scientists understand which life-stages may be most important in limiting population growth or causing declines.
BBO’s summer station is just one of more than 1,200 MAPS stations spread across North America that have collected more than 2.5 million bird capture records since 1989. Not only does our data inform how our local bird population is doing, it also contributes to this large-scale dataset that has been used to publish hundreds of papers relating bird vital rates to climate and habitat changes.
