White Mountain National Forest Wildlife Monitoring Program Personnel: David Capen, Sean MacFaden Cooperators: White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire Audubon, New Hampshire Fish and Game

The White Mountain National Forest established a wildlife monitoring program in 1992 to examine the effect of forest management on various animal taxa. To monitor populations of forest songbirds, 15 study transects constituting 360 survey plots were established in three management areas of the forest: areas under active silvicultural management (managed), areas currently not managed but adjacent to managed areas (adjacent), and wilderness areas permanently removed from active silvicultural management (remote). Of the 360 plots, 150 are located in managed areas, 150 are in adjacent areas, and 60 are in remote areas. The plots are located 200m apart. Together, the plots encompass a wide range of forest cover types, size classes, terrain, and elevation. The Spatial Analysis Lab is involved in several aspects of the monitoring effort for birds. First, the lab has used Global Positioning System receivers to record the exact position of each survey plot and has linked various levels of habitat data to the plots through ARC/INFO. The habitat data include plot-specific information such as tree species composition and structure as well as landscape-level descriptors such as ELTs, land type associations (LTAs), and forest/non-forest patterns identified from Landsat Thematicatic Mapper imagery. These data are being used in a multivariate analysis of avian habitat relationships at different scales in the forest. Second, the SAL is assisting the Forest Service in analyzing short-term trends in bird populations for the first five years of the monitoring program (1992-1996). The following map shows the wildlife monitoring transects in the White Mountain National Forest. Click on this map to see an example of an individual transect with ELT polygons overlaid.