Portland State Magazine Spring 2015

16 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2015 UNTIL YARD OWNERS join the research, Dresner and a few PSU students collect the data, including biology doctoral candidate Andrew Gibbs. Since the summer of 2013, Gibbs has conducted bird and native plant counts in 188 yards and 99 random spots throughout Portland, from the Mt. Tabor neighborhood in the east to about that distance on the west side, he says. The Backyard Habitat Certification Program requires different layers of vegetation—moving from ground shrubs to tree cover—so Gibbs examines the three-dimensional habitat, estimating the percent of native vegetation coverage at three levels from 20 to 30 inches off the ground. He also visits yards early in the morning, within four hours of dawn, to count every bird he sees or hears within 490 feet. “No one has gone into these yards in a systematic manner to check to see if the birds actually care if the yard is certified as a silver yard or a platinum yard,” Gibbs says. “Can the yard be in the middle of the city or does it have to be next to a natural habitat for it to matter to the birds?” Gibbs recently completed entering his bird data, but so far has completed only about 20 percent of his plant surveys. The time and effort necessary to gather the data is why in November Dresner submitted a grant to the National Science Foundation for four-year support of educational programs for citizen scientists, development of apps to allow yard owners to submit data, hiring of more graduate students, and even expansion of the study to local community gardens and to Chicago, for comparison. The apps, which would be developed by collaborators at OSU, would allow yard owners with even limited experience in species identification to collect data. “Yard owners could record a birdsong and the app helps you whittle down the possibilities [of species] to just a few, or maybe even one,” Dresner says. UNTIL THEY hear back on the grant, research will continue one backyard at a time. Dresner and Gibbs next plan to survey yards in Hillsdale and Laurelhurst, collecting bugs from the native shrubs where they live and thrive more often than on non-native, ornamental plants. The group also hopes to collect aerial photography and perform geographic information system analysis of the city’s tree cover. It’s time-intensive work, but Dresner and her team enjoy the challenge. “The folks who have established the yard habitats themselves are so inspiring,” she says. “It’s encouraging to keep hearing enthusiastic comments from them about working with natural processes as much as possible.”  Bess Pallares is a PSU book publishing student and a graduate assistant in the Office of University Communications . Clockwise from upper left: Maidenhair fern, photo by Tammi Miller; ladybug on Oregon iris, photo from Backyard Habitat; bleeding heart in certified backyard, photo by Gaylen Beatty; white-crowned sparrow, photo by Jean Tuomi.