bbsBayes: An R Package for Hierarchical Bayesian Analysis of North American Breeding Bird Survey Data

Abstract

The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) is the primary ecological monitoring program used to assess the population, status, and trends of North American birds. As such, accessible analysis of BBS data is crucial to wildlife conservation/management and ecological science in North America. The R package bbsBayes was developed as a wrapper for the analysis of BBS data using hierarchical Bayesian models, including the models currently used by the Canadian Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey. The goal of bbsBayes is to provide an accessible package for anyone in the conservation community to estimate population trajectories (time-series) and trends (rates of change) for any of the 400+ bird species monitored by the BBS, and to allow more advance users to easily access the data and model-templates necessary to customize an analysis for their research.