Mono Lake Eared Grebe survey volunteer needed

This post was written by Julia Frankenbach, 2013 Project Specialist.

Are you interested in assisting with avian research at Mono Lake? Do you have computer skills, good eyesight, and patience? If you answered “yes” to all of the above, you could be the Mono Lake Committee’s Eared Grebe volunteer!

We are looking for someone to count grebes in digital aerial photos of Mono Lake’s surface. The Committee assists researchers by coordinating an aerial photo survey each year in October, during which a pilot and photographer fly over and photograph Mono Lake’s surface and the birds on it. This annual Eared Grebe survey has happened for most of the past 20 years; visit the Mono Basin Clearinghouse to see the fluctuations in population size over time.

Sean Boyd of the Pacific Wildlife Research Centre in British Columbia then uses these photos to calculate the number of grebes by taking the initial count from the photos, converting that number into a density, adjusting it for scale, and using the current lake surface area to extrapolate the final number. Dr. Boyd needs a dedicated volunteer to serve as a backup for counting grebes in the photos and calculating the population size that visits Mono Lake.

Ideally, the volunteer will be available for multiple years, as this job requires some training and practice. The task will probably take about 80 hours of time total in the late fall and early winter and can be done remotely from home. You will need access to a computer and will be manually counting the grebes in approximately 800 photos and then entering this data into an Excel spreadsheet.

For more information, please contact Office Director Rose Catron or Education Director Bartshe Miller, or call the Mono Lake Committee at (760) 647-6595.