The Ohio Valley Ecosystem GAP Migratory Bird Resourse Priority GAP Metaproject (ORVE) was created in an effort to identify areas of importance to species of migratory birds.  The target bird species in this project are mainly songbirds that winter in South America or Latin America and breed or inhabit the Ohio River Watershed during the spring and summer.  The other organizations involved, Partners in Flight and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, feel that these species are in particular danger due to stress caused by fragmentation and loss of habitat in both their wintering grounds and their spring and summer ranges.  Loss of habitat and fragmentation have a number of effects upon a species and many of these are currently being studied.  The purpose of the project is to identify areas in the Ohio River watershed that are of particular importance to these species of birds and present the information in an ArcView GIS project.
 

Areas of both grassland and forest of specified sizes are being delineated from a larger land cover grid for analysis purposes.  Included in the study are layers defining state boundaries, county boundaries, and quadrangles.  Partners in Flight utilizes a physiographic region overlay similar to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regions, and this layer is also present.  To be included in the data set in the near future are Breeding Bird Survey data and Important Bird Area data provided by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
 

Targeted bird species are from a variety of genera and each has unique characteristics and cultural needs that are specific to it.  For example, the Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) breeds primarily on shrub lands and secondarily in wetland areas.  It builds its nest on the ground beneath low dense foliage.  the golden-winged warbler primarily eats insects for which it forages in the canopy.  This species has adapted to take advantage of succession and may be an edge habitat species.  On the other hand, the Black-throated Blue Warbler (Dendroica caerluescens) primarily breeds in mature deciduous forests and undisturbed mixed forest.  It requires approximately 94 square meters of habitat per breeding pair and nests in the dense shrub layer of the forests.  It forages for insects in the middle portion of the canopy.

Golden-winged Warbler