Science Communication

Integrating science and land stewardship: Using soundscapes to monitor biodiversity in midwestern oak woodlands under managed and unmanaged scenarios

Oak Woodlands & Forests Fire Consortium Webinar

Temperate woodlands are biodiverse natural communities threatened by land use change and fire suppression. In the Baraboo Hills (southern Wisconsin, USA) The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is managing for oak woodland habitat within extensive forest preserves with the goal of maintaining biodiversity and promoting fire-dependent species and natural communities once widespread in the Midwestern USA. Because the diversity of woodland species spans many taxa, efficiently quantifying biodiversity and understanding site-specific management effects can be challenging. In this presentation, UW-Madison PhD candidate Maia Persche will discuss results from a three-year field study across managed and unmanaged sites and describe how woodland management results in changes to soundscapes, and how this bioacoustic signature can be integrated into ecological monitoring projects. Ann Calhoun, TNC’s Driftless Area Resilience Manager, will share how insights gained through this research approach can help us understand the biodiversity response to stewardship activities and how takeaways may inform adaptive management over time.

Thank you to the Oak Woodlands & Forests Fire Consortium for hosting this webinar!

A Tail of Two Wildlife Communities

Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance Lecture

Thank you to the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance for inviting Maia and Sagara to be part of the 2023 lecture series! Here they describe wildlife communities, research, and conservation in the Baraboo Hills and in the Western Ghats of southern India.

Cascading Effects of Open Oak Woodland Restoration of Forest Arthropods and Birds

Wednesday Night at the Lab

Woodland restoration offers an important opportunity for ensuring the persistence of native Wisconsin biodiversity. However, understanding how open woodland management treatments, such as prescribed fire and tree thinning, effect forest species can be challenging. In this talk, Maia describes preliminary results from two years of fieldwork in the Baraboo Hills aimed at understanding the effects of oak woodland management on forest arthropods, and insectivorous birds. This work is part of her PhD, and is also the foundation of our long-term monitoring efforts. WN@TL is a public science series offered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to highlight current research across a wide variety of subjects.

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