Gaining Insight into Ecological Processes and Ecosystems Via Statistical Modeling
Goals of QWERL
Capabilities
Movement Ecology
Understanding animal movement patterns can provide key insight into their behavior, habitat use, and population dynamics. We use data loggers, including geolocators, radio transmitters, and satellite transmitters, to describe where animals go and how they behave. Using multistate modeling, we can improve our understanding of environmental drivers of behavioral change and inform conservation decisions that affect animals’ complete life cycles.
Community, Ecosystem, and Landscape Ecology
Animals interact with their environment and with other species. These interactions can impact survival, reproduction, competition, and other population dynamics. Community ecology integrates data across multiple taxa to describe communities and their dynamics, such as marine predator-prey relationships and their influence on movement and habitat use, or songbird competition for resources and the influence on breeding distributions. Ecosystem ecology investigates relationships between biotic and abiotic components, and considers how energy and nutrients flow throughout the system. Landscape ecology examines spatial patterns and ecological processes across broad geographic areas covering multiple ecosystems. Aided by remotely sensed data from satellites, acoustic recording devices, and unoccupied vehicles, landscape ecology can be a powerful tool for long-term monitoring and decision making.
Species Distribution and Abundance
Understanding where animals are found, how many there are, and how these factors change over space and time are crucial to conservation efforts. We focus on research that integrates data over multiple spatial and temporal scales to describe and explain patterns in species distribution and abundance.
Decision Science Support
Effective communication and engagement with decision makers is critical to ensuring that reliable data are used to inform decisions and improve conservation outcomes. We coordinate stakeholder meetings and utilize translational ecology principles to ensure that research is focused on real-world problems and outcomes are effectively presented to scientists and nonscientists alike.
Independent Science Review
Our diverse team of scientists are trusted by science, conservation, and management entities ranging from local municipalities to global organizations to provide detailed, constructive, and unbiased review of scientific products.
Featured Project
Offshore Wind and Benthic Change: Marine ecosystems, particularly benthic communities, are sensitive to disturbance. More information is needed to understand how offshore wind (OSW) farms will impact benthic communities in the Northwest Atlantic, where a majority of U.S. OSW development is underway. This study will assess potential changes to benthic communities in response to OSW development in the Northwest Atlantic, project subsequent impacts to higher trophic level species, and develop a research and monitoring plan for assessing the extent of these impacts.
Projects and Products
The Maine Bird Atlas
The Maine Bird Atlas was a collaborative effort directed and funded by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, with coordination, editing, and publication led by Maine Natural History Observatory in partnership with Maine Audubon and Biodiversity Research Institute. With data collection and analysis complete, the Atlas now stands as a long-term scientific resource that will inform wildlife management, conservation planning, research, and public education for decades to come.
Cumulative Effects Assessments Framework
As offshore wind energy development expands, understanding its cumulative effects on wildlife is increasingly important for effective planning and conservation. A new study coauthored by BRI researchers presents a flexible framework for assessing these effects at a regional scale. The framework combines spatial data on wildlife populations, development pressures, and other environmental factors to help identify offshore wind development scenarios that minimize potential impacts on species and populations, designed to work even when available information is incomplete.
Gulf of Maine Bird Distribution Model – Marine Ornithology (in press)
Spatial modeling allows us to resolve patterns in bird density, offering critical insights at both the local site level and across entire migratory regions. Using digital aerial survey imagery from 2023 – 2024, BRI’s quantitative ecologists developed seasonal models of marine bird density in the Gulf of Maine.
These species-specific models provide statistically robust estimates of the number of birds in each cell of a fine-scale grid covering the Gulf of Maine, and how those spatial patterns vary seasonally. This is fundamental information that decision makers need to minimize environmental impacts from offshore wind developments on marine birds.
Decision Science and Research Prioritization
A study coauthored by BRI researchers demonstrates a collaborative approach for bridging the gap between scientific research and conservation along the Gulf of Mexico.
The study brought together researchers and conservation practitioners to identify and prioritize critical research needs for declining coastal bird populations. Using structured decision making and a “constructed value of information” framework, participants evaluated key uncertainties and determined which research questions have the greatest potential to improve future conservation and management decisions.
Swainson’s Thrush Movements
The Swainson’s Thrush is one of the most common migratory passerine birds nesting in the central biogeographic region of Alaska, USA, and exhibits a Nearctic-Neotropical migration. Despite its common status, there is little published about the migration phenology, migration routes, and wintering area(s) of Swainson’s Thrushes from Alaska. Using archival light-level geolocators and archival GPS loggers, we provide the first documentation of migration routes, wintering areas, and the timing of autumn and spring migration for 16 adult male Swainson’s Thrushes from study areas in Denali National Park and Preserve and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.
Assessing Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Development on U.S. Marine Ecosystems Using Food Web Modeling
As offshore wind development expands along the U.S. Atlantic coast, understanding how turbine structures may affect marine ecosystems is an important part of responsible development. A new study led by BRI researchers explores how offshore wind infrastructure could alter the structure and function of marine food webs.
Researchers developed food web models for three sites along the U.S. Atlantic coast, comparing conditions before construction with estimated conditions four years after offshore wind development. The results suggest that turbine foundations and associated structures, which can function as artificial reefs, may lead to changes in local marine communities and food web dynamics, with organisms such as bivalves playing an important role in these shifts.
