Using demographic models to guide and evaluate restoration of riparian bird habitat: Implications for monitoring

Effective ecological restoration projects should be designed to meet biological objectives and monitored to verify that these objectives are met.  However, biological objectives of restoration projects may be vaguely defined and monitoring often focuses on statistical significance rather than biological significance.  From a population perspective, demographic modeling may be used to address these challenges.  Demographic models can be used to identify the magnitude of changes in vital rates that must be achieved in restored habitats in order to obtain desired rates of population growth.  This information can then be applied to designing statistically-sound monitoring programs. Using data on riparian birds in northern California, I illustrate the possible applications of demographic modeling to the design and evaluation of habitat restoration projects.  These results suggest that demographic modeling can provide a useful framework for synthesizing a wide variety of data related to habitat management.  However, because we seldom know all of the parameters of interest with a high degree of certainty, methods that can incorporate uncertainty are needed.