Post 4: Wintering Grounds

What I Discovered At My Destination

Now that I have finally arrived at the conclusion of my journey, after finding data about piping plover presence on multiple barrier islands and peninsulas along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana and comparing it with various factors, I am confident in the results I was able to get.

For both Texas and Louisiana, I took data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Office of Coastal Management for levels of tourism. I used the GDP of each coastal county in the Leisure and Hospitality sector that one or more of the randomly selected barrier islands fell in as a proxy for actual numbers of people present on or around wintering grounds during winter months. This was available yearly from 2005 to 2019, while the data I used on the piping plover presence in a given location was taken from the International Piping Plover Censuses, which took place every five years from 1991 to 2011. Since they lack the overlap necessary to put them through Excel together, I did have to do separate comparisons for this data, which is a rather large limitation. However, it was the only source of this type of information that was relevant and not behind a paywall, so it was worth it. The above tables are of the Terrebonne County regression and the two islands, East Timbalier Island and Raccoon Island, that fall in it. There doesn't seem to be any correlation between them, which is similar to the other locations when looking at this factor.

I used monthly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on the gross inputs to atmospheric units in thousands of barrels a day that are processed in both Texan and Louisianian oil refineries. Gross inputs to atmospheric units is a measure of the amount of products like hydrocarbons, oils, and gases that are produced from the refining of crude oils and shales. I averaged the wintering season months from October to April because that is the time where the piping plover are most likely to have roosted. This data, unlike tourism, was available yearly from the winter of 1991 to the spring of 2020, so I was able to do a much more effective comparison, even if the results were not ultimately that helpful.

I made linear regressions for both of these as compared with the plover populations seen at various locations according to the International Piping Plover Censuses. I ultimately only used the data that the wintering portions of these censuses were able to collect because other sources were much less thorough and I wanted to understand why the international censuses specifically were finding that the plover's fidelity to their usual locations was beraking down.

After all of this, I can safely conclude that the rates of both oil refining in the Gulf and amounts of money spent on tourism in coastal counties are both rising, but there is no real way to connect this back to the fluctuations seen in the piping plover’s population. Tune in for my last post, where I will sum up the entirety of the project and conclude my work on this blog.