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Waterfowl brood drone surveys from Suisun, California 2019

Metadata Updated: November 13, 2025

Effective waterfowl management relies on the collection of relevant demographic data to inform land management decisions; however, some types of data are difficult to obtain. For waterfowl, brood surveys are difficult to conduct because wetland habitats often obscure ducklings from being visually assessed. Here, we used Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) to assess what wetland habitat characteristics influenced brood abundance in Suisun Marsh, California, USA. Using a thermal imaging camera, we surveyed 17 wetland units encompassing 332 ha of flooded area on seven waterfowl hunting clubs during the waterfowl breeding season. Additionally, using a combination of multispectral imagery collected from the UAS flights and LiDAR data from the previous year, we mapped habitat composition within each unit to relate to brood observation counts. From June 3-7, 2019, we identified 113 individual broods comprised of 827 ducklings. We found a positive relationship between the number of broods observed and the proportion of the unit that was flooded. We also found a positive relationship between the number of broods observed and the area of effective habitat, a metric of flooded habitat within a specific distance to flooded vegetation. Brood surveys using UAS could compliment the traditional Breeding Population Survey and provide local managers with fine scale and timely information regarding shifts in brood abundance in the region.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 13, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 13, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-666a3123d34e9bcc607bda5c
Data Last Modified 2024-10-01T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 36fac894-720f-4bd9-a6f4-11cc88b41455
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -122.0828, 38.0762, -121.8755, 38.2328
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8b9931b62c6fe64ee6b7c7fc6b38d690dedff70a145541d11f7306bc639e7994
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -122.0828, 38.0762, -122.0828, 38.2328, -121.8755, 38.2328, -121.8755, 38.0762, -122.0828, 38.0762}

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