M.A.P.S. Bird Banding Project

The Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) Program was created by The Institute for Bird Populations in 1989 to assess and monitor the vital rates and population dynamics of over 120 species of North American landbirds in order to provide critical conservation and management information on their populations. The MAPS Program utilizes constant-effort mist netting and banding at a continent-wide network of monitoring stations staffed by both professional biologists and highly trained volunteers.

(NOTE: Clicking on the links below you will cause you to leave the OBBA website. Click the back arrow on your browser to return to OBBA from these links.)

MAPS Tables of Results - view MAPS productivity indices and survivorship estimates covering the period 1992-1998 and station information covering the period 1989-2000. Previously these indices and estimates have been available only in IBP's peer-reviewed publication, Bird Populations.

MAPS Materials - manuals and forms for MAPS operators.

MAPS Chat - see our most recent newsletter (Spring 2002)

MAPS is organized around research and management goals as well as monitoring goals. MAPS data are used to describe temporal and spatial patterns in the vital rates of target species, and relationships between these patterns and

• ecological characteristics and population trends of the target species
• station-specific and landscape-level habitat characteristics
• spatially explicit weather variables.

Information from these patterns and relationships are then used to

• identify the causes of population declines
• formulate management actions and conservation strategies to reverse declines, and maintain healthy populations
• evaluate the effectiveness of management actions and conservation strategies.

Since its first season, MAPS has grown from 16 to over 500 stations and has received the support and endorsement of many federal agencies and conservation groups, including the USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Biological Resources Division of the USGS, the Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program, the National Audubon Society, and the international cooperative Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Initiative, "Partners in Flight."

During the past 11 years, the MAPS Program has produced 25 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 22 manuals, handbooks, and non-peer-reviewed position papers, and 109 technical (mostly annual) reports to federal and state agencies and private organizations. MAPS data have been used in a number of conservation and management planning documents, including land management planning on DoD military installations in the Midwest and Texas, timber sale plans on national forests in Oregon and Washington, and the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, a report solicited by the United States Congress.