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Ecological determinants of avian distribution and abundance at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic

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Abstract

Large areas of the Arctic remain poorly surveyed, creating biological knowledge gaps as scientists and managers grapple with issues of increasing resource extraction and climate change. We modelled spatiotemporal patterns in abundance for avian species in the low Arctic ecosystem near the community of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, from 2015 to 2017. We employed six habitat covariates, including terrain ruggedness and freshwater cover, and contrasted the influence of elevation with distance from coast, as well as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI; a proxy for vegetative productivity) with the normalized difference water index (NDWI; a proxy for vegetation water content). Our results most clearly show the importance of low elevation, large amounts of freshwater and high vegetative productivity for Arctic birds at relatively local scales (<1 km2). Although NDVI more consistently appeared in competitive models of abundance, NDWI was particularly important in predicting abundance for shorebirds, ducks, Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus) and Lapland Longspurs (Calcarius lapponicus), demonstrating that it may be a more influential habitat covariate than NDVI for species that frequent habitats with wet vegetation. We also documented apparent shifts in habitat between early and late summer for geese, which were more strongly associated with freshwater later in the season, likely due to the presence of flightless juveniles and moulting adults at that time. Our study illustrates a relatively easy to implement survey methodology for avian species, provides baseline information for an Arctic study area that had not previously been surveyed intensively, and includes species that are underrepresented in previous literature.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Eric Rexstad and David Miller for their advice on the analysis of distance sampling data. The authors also thank Barry Robinson, whose experience from similar survey work in Igloolik, Nunavut was valuable in the initial survey design and field protocol. A number of field technicians and graduate students contributed on the ground to the collection of the data presented here as scribes and guides, including Alexandre Paiement, Yannick Gagnon, Cameron Nordell, Mathieu Tetreault, Silu Oolooyuk, Andy Aliyak, Erik Hedlin and Vincent Lamarre.

Funding

This study secured funding from several sources, including Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Mitacs Accelerate; Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.; ArcticNet; Northern Scientific Training Program (Polar Knowledge Canada); Department of Environment, Government of Nunavut; and the University of Alberta.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, GSB 751, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G0N4, Canada

    Kevin A. Hawkshaw & Lee Foote

  2. Arctic Raptors Project, Box 626, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada

    Kevin A. Hawkshaw & Alastair Franke

  3. Nunavut Wildlife Cooperative Research Unit, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada

    Alastair Franke

  4. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, CW 405, Edmonton, T6G2E9, Alberta, Canada

    Alastair Franke

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  1. Kevin A. Hawkshaw
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Correspondence to Kevin A. Hawkshaw.

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Electronic supplementary material

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300_2020_2766_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Species list and proportions seen during distance sampling surveys from 2015-17 around Rankin Inlet, Nunavut (PDF 104 kb)

300_2020_2766_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Summary information and model output for the full suite of candidate density surface models fit to avian species/groups surveyed at Rankin Inlet, NU from 2015-17. Model code numbers seen above each model output corresponds to the model number seen in Online Resource 3. In order, each summary output presents the response distribution used in the model, including the power parameter in the case of the Tweedie distribution or the dispersion parameter for negative binomial models, the link function, the model formula, summary information for the parametric terms, including coefficient estimates and standard errors as well as test statistics (see summary.gam() function description in the mgcv package for more information https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/mgcv/mgcv.pdf), summary information for the smooth terms (in all cases random effect splines), including the estimated degrees of freedom (edf) reference degrees of freedom, and appropriate test statistics for significance (again, see summary.gam() function description), the model’s adjusted R2, percent deviance explained, Maximum Likelihood estimate, scale parameter, and sample size (n). ndvi (normalized difference vegetation index), ndwi (normalized difference water index), tri (terrain ruggedness index) (PDF 227 kb)

300_2020_2766_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Model comparisons for avian species and groups surveyed at Rankin Inlet, NU, 2015-17. Included is the response distribution used for each species or group (Dist), along with the model formula, proportion deviance explained (Dev), Akaike’s Information Criterion corrected for small sample size, and the model’s estimated degrees of freedom (edf). ndvi = the normalized difference vegetation index, ndwi (normalized difference water index), tri (terrain ruggedness index) (PDF 89 kb)

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Hawkshaw, K.A., Foote, L. & Franke, A. Ecological determinants of avian distribution and abundance at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. Polar Biol 44, 1–15 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02766-4

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