2 minute read
Wisconsin Waterfowl Productivity Project
Wisconsin Waterfowl Productivity Project
Megan Seidl and Jacob Tepsa, undergraduate students involved in the Wisconsin Waterfowl Productivity Project, prepare to deploy a drone.
Photo Credit: Ben Sedinger
Advertisement
It’s no secret that many ducks breed in Wisconsin every summer, with some common species being mallards, wood ducks, blue-winged teal, and ring-necked ducks. In 2020, Wisconsin adopted a new Waterfowl Habitat Conservation Strategy that ranked Wisconsin watersheds in terms of their importance to these four duck species, among other things, intending to guide conservation and restoration efforts across the state. The backbone of this strategy is a model relying on multiple data sets and expert opinions.
Toward the end of spring 2022, five undergraduate students from the Kennedy Grohne Waterfowl and Wetlands Lab at UW-Stevens Point started working on a project to collect waterfowl productivity data across Wisconsin to validate the above strategy. The crew is flying drones outfitted with thermal and visual spectrum cameras to count the number of breeding duck pairs, duck nests, and broods with ducklings they see at 20 sites across Wisconsin.
This technology, particularly the thermal cameras, has worked great for the surveys because they allow the crews to key in on “heat signatures” to detect better individuals that can be difficult to see otherwise.
Amanda Griswold, a new graduate student, will lead a new field crew of undergraduate students in 2023. Amanda’s research will focus on comparing the metrics of waterfowl productivity to the rankings provided by the Conservation Strategy to see how well it predicts waterfowl habitat quality.
Ben Sedinger, the Kennedy-Grohne Endowed Chair in Waterfowl and Wetlands Conservation, leads this project. Sedinger joined the UW-Stevens Point faculty in 2019. In addition to his teaching, he advises the UW-Stevens Point Student Chapter of Ducks Unlimited and the Wildlife Society Wood Duck Project.
Drones are used with thermal cameras to count breeding duck pairs, duck nests, and broods as part of a research project focused on Wisconsin waterfowl.
(Photo Credit: Ben Sedinger)
