National Wildlife Refuges (NWR) in Texas and Oklahoma manage forested habitats to support priority bird populations in the West Gulf Coastal Plain and Ouachitas Bird Conservation Regions. Airborne laser altimetry, or light detection and ranging (lidar), captures detail on vertical and horizonal forest structure helpful for determining bird species diversity, density, and distribution. Analysis-ready PlanetScope (PS) imagery with channels in the blue (455–515 nanometers), green (500–590 nanometers), red (590–670 nanometers), and near-infrared (780–860 nanometers) wavelengths provided a high spatial resolution (4-meter) and composited monthly data source that can add tree composition information when fused with lidar. These sources can contribute to forest management on refuges by helping to create co-located continuous forest inventory (CFI) plots and songbird point counts to monitor habitat conditions and species abundance. To address this need, machine learning ensemble models are being developed for estimating basal area, quadratic mean diameter, cubic foot volume, and tree density by combining CFI plots with lidar voxel and PS phenology metrics. Modeled inventory parameters are also being predicted for NWR lands presently lacking CFI plots. These efforts will be applied to validate unsampled NWR predictions and to improve estimates of songbird habitat relationships and density. Remote sensing applications and songbird models may help inform forest management actions developed to maintain diverse habitat conditions and songbird populations.
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