Marine Bird Density Atlas

Welcome to the Marine Bird Density Atlas, which displays distributions and density indices of a selected subset of the major groups of marine birds and diving waterfowl species seen by aerial surveys conducted since 1992 by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on the inner marine waters of Washington State. The area of main focus extends from the western end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca eastwards, and from the Canadian borders near Point Roberts south to the southern end of Puget Sound.

These aerial surveys are an example of one of the more consistent methodologies applied to marine avifauna over a longer period and area, in the inner marine waters of western Washington, than has been conducted here before. This database in its entirety is housed in the Olympia office of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. While all species seen on the aerial surveys are included in the source agency database (MAPSYS), presently only a subset of species were selected for either summer or winter display on this information site at this time. The winter selections are 14 groupings that focus primarily on selections of all species combined, or species or species groups of diving duck, alcid, loon, or grebe species of particular concern. The summer selections are 7 groupings that focus on selections of all species combined, or gull, cormorant, tern, alcid, or diving ducks species of particular concern.

There are several options of bathymetry as well as track line displays that are available, the isoline bathymetry being the only option to display simultaneously with the bird density displays. Additional information is available on survey methodology and brief synopses of selected species occurrences, densities, and trends are also available. Other documents like the PSAMP 1992-99 component report as well as the original implementation plan are also accessible. Please explore and examine these various options.

This information site was developed to provide greater public access to the information gathered and to display at least a part of it in a beginning phase. It may be enhanced in the future and we welcome user suggestions for any such improvement or additional inclusions.

Disclaimer and Copyright Information Make sure to check out PSAMP Help for FAQs and other information. Warning: This application does have some graphics intensive parts and contains extensive javascript. On slower dial-up internet connections, the initial screen may take several minutes to load. This website has been tested with Internet Explorer 5.5, Netscape 6.0/Mozilla 1.0 and newer versions of these browsers. Other modern browsers may also work but have not been thoroughly tested. This site displays best with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Other screen resolutions may provide less than optimal results. This application makes extensive use of pop-up windows for displaying maps and information. Browser and 3rd party pop-up blocker settings may need adjustment for proper viewing of this site. Internet Explorer 7 or recent releases of other browsers may not allow the PSAMP Marine Bird Density Atlas to display map coordinates in the Status Bar. To do so, a browser option setting must be modified. See the application's Help Page FAQ for instructions on changing you Status Bar settings. What is GIS? GIS at WDFW