By Ainsley Lord

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Gallagher, Dr. Bowen

Abstract

As National Parks become more visited and popular, there is very little known about how different animals are being impacted by this influx in humans. I worked to investigate if there is a correlation between the amount of car traffic through Shenandoah National Park (SNP) and sightings of Red-Tailed Hawks. This study used spatial analysis of traffic data from the Rockfish and Thorton Gap entrances of SNP and eBird data of Red-Tailed hawk sightings near the entrances. These roads are the most and least used entrances into SNP and have very similar habitats around them, so any major change in Red-Tailed Hawk population would most likely be in response to an outside factor such as human activity in the area. Along with this, relying on citizen science for the data opens an opportunity to identify key pitfalls found when using citizen collected data only in hypothesis driven research.