I am recent graduate from the Global Ecology Studies Program (GESP) at Poolesville High School in Poolesville, Maryland. GESP is a magnet program that focuses on environmental studies and sciences and learning about the environment through hands-on experiences. Every senior in the Global Ecology Program is required to take the Advanced Placement Environmental Science course and to do a Senior Project. This project spans the entire year and must benefit the environment in some way -- whether it be directly or by influencing other people to help the environment.

I chose a project that involved original research. Such projects are usually more involved than most other types of projects. The head of GESP, Mrs. Joyce Bailey, informed me about a project that would involve conducting a transect survey at little Bennett Regional Park. I immediately decided to do it because it seemed like a very good fit for me with my interest in birds and skills as a birder.

In September of 2010, I went to a Friends of Little Bennett meeting to discuss my project. I decided that the purpose of this study would be to collect data on bird populations and the number of bird species sighted in Little Bennett Regional Park. In doing so, I studied the seasonal fluctuations of bird populations and the overall bird species diversity of the Park. I knew that I would have to choose a site that would be representative of the entire Little Bennett ecosystem if I was going to study the overall health of the ecosystem. So I chose a 1.4 mile long segment of the Western Piedmont Trail at the center of the Park. It has very diverse habitats and is representative of the Little Bennett ecosystem.

Procedure and Protocol
I conducted surveys from September 19, 2010 to April 30, 2011. For each survey, I walked the 1.4 mile segment of the Western Piedmont Trail and recorded every single bird that I saw or heard regardless of the distance from the trail. For every bird that I saw or heard on every walk, I recorded its species and the number of individual birds that I saw of that species. I would identify each bird and how many there were and my dad would record the data on a spread sheet. I conducted surveys about every other week so that I would be able to collect data at least once each month.

Principal Findings
As part of my principal findings, bird populations and numbers of bird species were greatest during the fall and spring migration periods and were lowest during winter months. This is probably because of fall and spring migrants and harsher weather during the winter months. For all of the transect surveys that I conducted, there was a total of 947 individual birds and 67 different species of birds. I calculated a Shannon Wiener Biodiversity Index value of 3.422 for the study area. A Shannon-Weiner index is a means of determining the overall biodiversity of an area. The values usually range from about 1.5-3.5. The value I calculated was very high, meaning that the overall bird species diversity for Little Bennett Regional Park is very high. This result indicates that the Little Bennett ecosystem is very healthy and diverse.

What I Learned
I learned a multitude of things from doing this project. I learned how bird species diversity can be used as an environmental indicator, and how important it is for an environment to have a diverse bird population. Based on the results of Little Bennett Regional Park being very healthy, it can serve as a lead example for other protected areas. It can encourage the protection of other places that need to be protected because of the apparent effect that protecting an area has on the overall health of the ecosystem. It also shows the importance of protecting an area.

Since my study only spanned from September 19, 2010 to April 30, 2011, I hope that this study continues. It would be good to have a complete year of data including the summer months, though a continuous monitoring of bird species diversity over the span of at least a few years would be most informative. Future projects might study other areas of the Park because there are different habitats throughout the Park. Only by studying other areas of the Park can there be a complete picture of bird species diversity in Little Bennett Regional Park.

See a spreadsheet of the data I collected.

See a pie chart illustrating the prevalence of all the bird species sighted in the study. (PDF)

See a line chart illustrating the bird count on each day that I collected data. (PDF)

Posted July 5, 2011