At a glance
Every day the campus community actively engages with the buildings where we learn, work, play or live. However, most are… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2021-2022
- Large
- Awarded
- $43,339
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
- Website & social links
Every day the campus community actively engages with the buildings where we learn, work, play or live. However, most are unaware of the over 100 species of birds found on campus or that they collide with the buildings’ surfaces. Birds cannot detect transparent glass surfaces, like windows or glass walkways, and fly towards vegetation, open spaces, or perches beyond the glass, hitting it head-on. Reflective glass is also dangerous for birds as it can reflect habitat space or the sky, confusing birds as they fly towards the reflection resulting in collisions. And night collisions occur when birds fly towards lit windows or surfaces, particularly during fall and spring migration. A study from the University of British Columbia estimates that college campuses can kill up to 10,000 birds yearly due to collisions. However, there are design solutions available to prevent bird building collisions.
This project aims to understand where collision "hot spots" are on our campus and develop a plan to treat them. By monitoring 20 campus buildings over six quarters, we will increase our understanding of which species are affected by collisions and identify the deadliest design features. The project will also bring awareness to the issue of bird building collisions by engaging campus and local communities through campus tours, a course taught by the project lead, an app allowing anyone to record collisions across campus, and recruiting volunteers for collision monitoring.
Gathering data about the collision victims, birds, and deadly architectural features on campus provides a unique opportunity for students to engage in the study of birds and buildings. This convenient central location eliminates extra travel time or field trip fees, allowing more students to join the project. Further, this project will engage underrepresented communities, particularly in the environmental sciences and architecture and the LGBTQIA community, first-generation students, and women in the sciences through volunteer opportunities, the project's course, and research assistant positions.
As humans design with large amounts of glass surface area to increase human well-being through views of nature and increased natural daylight, we are placing birds in danger. Each year hundreds of millions of birds die due to collisions with these glass surfaces, threatening local biodiversity and impacting North American populations. This project intends to conduct a student-led two-phase, two-year bird building collision monitoring study of a set of University of Washington Seattle campus buildings. This project aims to understand when and where collisions occur on campus and how best to prevent future collisions. This project asks to consider its funding to protect local biodiversity on campus, benefiting students, faculty, and staff while reaching a larger audience of community members, researchers, and designers.
There are five goals for Phase 1:
- Provide a year-round data set to determine vulnerable species and campus designs conducive to collisions.
- Develop a transdisciplinary independent study course that will introduce students from any major to bird building collisions as a conservation and sustainable design issue. This course will allow students to engage in a research project on campus without traveling or paying field trip fees. This accessibility and actively seeking to support students from marginalized, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities will welcome students not traditionally included in environmental conservation practices and design fields.
- Raise awareness locally about bird building collisions on campus through campus and community outreach, including tours, signage, visual mitigation techniques, and an informational app or website.
- Identify buildings or features to retrofit with vinyl design patterns that will be applied to the surface of the glass. The approval to retrofit glass surfaces will be obtained after local data has determined that the building or feature is a hot spot for collisions. Ten campus building coordinators are open to retrofitting options, with the Life Sciences Building manager verbally requesting mitigation at their site.
- Commission artwork from student or community indigenous artists as designed collision mitigation artwork that emphasizes indigenous presence on campus.
There are four goals for Phase 2:
- Monitor retrofitted buildings for effectiveness, continue retrofitting where needed, and continue monitoring for collisions in Autumn 2023 and Winter 2024.
- Conduct a perception study of how students, staff, faculty, and campus visitors perceive the bird-protecting designs by asking if their site or campus experience and connection to campus biodiversity are affected by the addition of these designs. This data will also be submitted for publication, the first on this topic.
- Submit the year-round monitoring results indicating vulnerable species and designs conducive to collisions for publication.
- Submit the observed effectiveness of retrofitted buildings or features for publication to provide the foundation needed to implement effective bird-protecting designs on campus and in the community.
Judy Bowes
Project lead
- jbowes2@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
Alex Anderson
Team member
- ata@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Faculty
Each year, up to one billion birds are lost to bird building collisions in the United States (Loss et al., 2014). This enormous yearly loss is one of the four top anthropogenic threats birds face leading to a 29% net loss of avian populations in North America (Rosenburg et al., 2019). Additionally, this critical conservation issue threatens biodiversity locally, regionally, and for migrating bird, throughout the Americas. Protecting biodiversity such as birds also increases overall human well-being through visual and audible connections to nature.
Birds are unable to perceive transparent glass surfaces as solid or distinguish between reflections of habitat space or flight paths in the glass. Birds collide head-on into transparent and reflective glass surfaces, killing them, in most cases, instantly. To date, the majority of bird building collision studies focus on fall and spring migration in the central and easter areas of the United States. A 2021 study by DeGroot et al. monitored collisions on the University of British Columbia Campus for five seasons (two winters, fall, spring, and summer), indicating bird building collisions are a year-round problem and collision patterns can vary regionally. College campuses are a hot spot for bird-building collisions, with the University of British Columbia estimating a loss of 10,000 yearly. However, collisions can be prevented through gathering local collision data, bird protecting designs, and education strategies.
This letter proposes the intent to conduct a two-phase, two-calendar year monitoring of a set of University of Washington Seattle campus buildings that have reported collisions. The first phase will monitor campus buildings for collisions beginning in September 2022 during the most fatal season, fall migration, followed by winter, spring, and summer for 45 days each. The collision victims will be collected by student volunteers who will enter the details of the site and species in a data collection file. The deceased birds will be donated to the Burke Museum, which has approved their addition to their collection.
The goal of the first year of monitoring is to provide a year-long set of data to determine the vulnerable species and indicate deadly designs for retrofitting. The first deliverable is a document outlining the collisions monitoring results to be submitted for publication.
With the data gathered from the first fall season, the project can begin to identify buildings to retrofit. Phase 2 of the project will monitor retrofitted buildings for effectiveness. Two issues prevent widely implementing bird protecting designs. First, when comparing current product testing methods such as flight tunnels to case studies, Judy found they overestimate the product's effectiveness. This will be the first study monitoring bird protecting designs for their effectiveness in an ecologically salient setting. And second, though a few building guidelines advocate protecting biodiversity through preventing collisions, it's not required, nor do any standards exist. Based on the data gathered in the second year, Phase 2, the second deliverable will provide architects and designers with a set of standards to implement effective bird protecting designs. The data will also be documented and submitted for publication. Further, in the second phase, the project will conduct a perception study of how students, staff, faculty, and campus visitors perceive the bird protecting designs by asking if their site or campus experience is impacted by the addition of these designs. This data will also be documented and submitted for publication, the first on this topic.
Throughout both phases of the project, education and outreach about the importance of preventing bird building collisions will be crucial. A third reason preventing bird building collisions is not widely implemented is the lack of awareness. By reaching students who will enter careers in many of the fields that contribute to collisions, this project will create no stewards for protecting birds and biodiversity. This can be achieved through campus events such as art installations, volunteering opportunities, and informational signs near retrofitted buildings. Local firms and campus architects will be included in the drafting of collision standards. Further, through publication, the data and standards have the potential to educate a global audience of researchers and designers. Through education and outreach, this project will engage with the four main stakeholders: students on campus, the community on campus, in Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest, researchers in avian conservation, and designers or architects.
Conducting a large two-year project requires a project lead who has experience in project management and research. Judy Bowes is a Ph.D. student in the College of the Built Environments and has been a researcher and project coordinator for five years at Penn State University on two NSF projects. The budget reflects a full RA position for two years as the demands of the project do not allow for other RA positions. Judy's estimated contribution is 800 hours per year ($25,652). Student volunteers are crucial to this project and will require 10-35 volunteers. The students will not only benefit from contributing to campus research but will build a foundation of knowledge of sustainability, bird biology and identification, active stewardship, and increased well-being through campus walks. To support Judy and the volunteers, the budget includes an undergraduate research assistant (160 per year/$2,720) who will assist with entering data, cleaning data sets, and filling in for volunteers as needed. The project requires a faculty member researching daylighting and views for 40 per year ($2,773), Judy's mentor, a faculty member in architecture (30 hours per year/$2,080), a faculty member (ornithologist or wildlife sciences) to review the publications (12 hours per year/$951), and a collision research consultant (4 hours per year/$800). The material costs to collect the deceased birds are estimated at $3,000 a year. The total yearly budget for the project is $37,975, with a total budget of $75,950.
As humans build with large amounts of glass surface area to increase human well-being through views of nature and natural daylight, we are placing birds in danger threatening local and continental biodiversity. This project asks to consider its funding to further collisions to protect local biodiversity and reach a large audience of researchers and designers.
Request amount and budget
How the project will react to funding reductions
A 50% cut in funding: As the lead on the project, I would take the 50% cut to my hourly support leaving the lead position with approximately $8,000 in the budget. Considering the length of the project must reflect multiple seasons and the need for student research assistants, shortening the length of the study or eliminating both paid student collaborators is not an option. However, cutting my support would make organizing and leading the project much more difficult as I will need to work on an additional paid project, reducing the time available to mentor students. A second option would be condensing the data and outreach positions into one research assistant position, leaving approximately $25,000 for the lead position. With either option, I am dedicated to moving forward with this project. I believe it is crucial to connect students to local biodiversity and plant the seeds for talented students to enter this emerging field. A 20% cut in funding: As the lead, I would take a 20% cut to my hourly pay, reducing the lead position's total wages to approximately $40,000. A 10% cut in funding: As the lead, I would take a 10% cut to my hourly pay, reducing the lead position's total wages to approximately $51,000.
Plans for financial longevity
The project aims to highlight the issue of bird building collisions as a conservation, sustainability, and biodiversity issue on campus and in our region. While not a goal of this project, the UW Collision Mitigation group, led by this project's lead, is currently working towards Bird-Friendly Campus Guidelines that this project's data will support. Furthermore, campus architects, faculty of the College of the Built Environments, and more than a dozen building managers support this project and protecting birds on campus, indicating a momentum for further study and mitigation. Through this project, the campus will become a lasting example of how a bird-friendly campus supports biodiversity through signage and the physical designs applied to glass surfaces. Additionally, the College of the Built Environments and the project lead will explore the long-term management of the app or website. To further secure the project's longevity, the project will attempt to make the app or website data downloadable to the public to identify hot spots in the future.
Problem statement
Each year, up to one billion birds are lost to bird building collisions in the United States (Loss et al., 2014). This enormous yearly loss is one of the four top anthropogenic threats birds face contributing to a 29% net loss of avian populations in North America (Rosenburg et al., 2019). Additionally, this critical conservation issue threatens biodiversity locally, regionally, and for migrating birds throughout the Americas. Protecting biodiversity such as birds also increases overall human well-being through visual and audible connections to nature.
Birds collide head-on into transparent and reflective glass surfaces, killing them, in most cases, instantly. Birds cannot perceive transparent glass surfaces as solid or distinguish between reflections of habitat space or flight paths in the glass. To date, most bird building collision studies focus on fall and spring migration in the central and eastern areas of the United States. A 2021 study by DeGroot et al. monitored collisions on the University of British Columbia campus for five seasons (two winters, fall, spring, and summer), indicating bird building collisions are a year-round problem in the Pacific Northwest and that collision patterns can vary regionally. Additionally, based on a few previous studies, design features of college campuses are likely conducive to collisions. The University of British Columbia, a campus similar in design to the University of Washington, estimates a loss of 10,000 birds yearly to collisions. However, bird building collisions can be prevented through gathering local collision data, applying collision mitigating designs to the surface of the glass, and targeted education strategies.
There are one published study monitoring collisions in the Pacific Northwest and six studies monitoring mitigation designs for effectiveness on in-use buildings. This indicates a significant knowledge gap nationally and in our region in this field of study. The field of study concerning bird building collisions is primarily funded by building owners that have collision issues, small local non-profits, bird-safe product manufacturers, and non-paid student or volunteer-based studies. Projects on this topic have yet to be funded by resources such as NSF. This project seeks to further establish the study of bird building collisions as a vital field of research through example. Additionally, this project has focused on CFS to fund this study for three main reasons:
- To lay the framework for protecting local biodiversity through campus-based student-led initiatives that can be repeated on any campus and actively supports students not traditionally included in environmental conservation practices and design fields.
- To educate, support, and provide a foundation of knowledge of avian conservation for students from all academic backgrounds to professionally participate in this emerging field or become lifelong stewards of avian conservation.
- To prevent conflicts of interest by not accepting funding from private building owners or manufacturers of bird-safe products.
While this project is research-focused, the research will be conducted by students refining their research skills. Further, the results of this project will directly impact the campus community by protecting local biodiversity.
Measure the impacts
This project aims to address the issue of bird building collisions in three ways:
- Collecting collision data on campus contributes to the local study of collisions and identifies local collision patterns, design hot spots, and vulnerable species.
- Mitigating collisions on campus through design strategies and education while monitoring the designs for effectiveness in an ecologically salient setting.
- Providing students with an opportunity to contribute to an environmental conservation study locally while building a foundation of knowledge of why collisions happen, how to prevent them, basic avian knowledge and observation of campus biodiversity. Student involvement will be measured through student contribution in quarterly reports, data collection, and active participation.
The impact of this project will be measured in three ways:
- Through quarterly reports accessible on the project's app or website outlining the monitoring results, student involvement, sharing the number of specimens donated to the Burke Museum, and goals completed over the quarter reaching the campus and local community.
- Through student contributions and participation, the goal of building a local connection to biodiversity and supporting students from underrepresented communities and groups will be assessed quarterly.
- Three research papers will be submitted for publication to reach a broader academic audience. The three publications will evaluate the perception of designs available to prevent collisions on campus, collision monitoring results, and the effectiveness of campus mitigation designs.
Education and outreach goals
Through education and outreach, this project will engage with four stakeholders: students, faculty, and staff on campus, the Seattle and the Pacific Northwest communities, researchers in avian conservation, and designers and architects. Throughout both phases of the project, education and outreach about the importance of preventing bird building collisions will be crucial as there is a lack of awareness of the issue. By reaching students who will enter careers in fields that contribute to collisions, this project will create new stewards for protecting birds and biodiversity. This will be achieved through campus events such as art installations, class and volunteering opportunities, two research positions, and informational signs near retrofitted buildings. Further, through publication, the data and solutions have the potential to educate a global audience of researchers, designers, and conservationists. Particularly, architects and designers will benefit greatly from the project's results, including the project partner, the College of the Built Environments.
The UW and Seattle community will find out about the project through focused outreach campaigns, an app or website, mitigation designs as an educational tool, and publications in the following ways:
- Through focused campus outreach, students from underrepresented, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ communities will be encouraged to apply for the research assistant positions, join the independent study course, or participate in the study as volunteers.
- Bird building collisions happen across campus and Seattle, any time of day. While the project can identify hot spots where most collisions happen, monitoring efforts cannot gather data from all sites. By introducing students, faculty, and staff to an app or website, allowing them to report collisions at any location, they will not only be introduced to the project but be part of the project without a formal commitment.
- Mitigation designs designed by student and community artists will include signage about the project. They will be used as an educational tool for communicating the importance of protecting birds.
- While publications may reach a small audience, part of the outreach goal is to promote the research to local and national avian conservation networks and non-profits.
Additionally, the project will involve the UW and Seattle community through campus tours, volunteering opportunities, and collaboration with the Seattle Audubon Society in the following ways:
- Campus tours led by the project lead and organized by the outreach research assistant will lead students, faculty, and staff to hot spots of collisions on campus, mitigation techniques, and areas of thriving biodiversity. The tours will target local architecture firms to communicate the need and feasibility of mitigating bird building collisions through design.
- In addition to volunteering to monitor buildings for collisions, the project will reach out to the UW community to gather information about their perception of bird-safe windows and which patterns are more aesthetically pleasing. One hurdle often faced when retrofitting buildings is the perceived design aesthetics. Architects and designers often question if window patterns are burdensome to occupants. The UW community can help clarify this issue, benefiting both birds and designers.
- The Seattle Audubon Society community is supportive of the campus monitoring project and is eager to help or promote the project as part of their Bird-safe Seattle goals as well as contribute $5000 to campus mitigation designs.
Student involvement
Student involvement in the project is crucial for building the foundation for a bird-friendly campus and impacting the field of study through actively participating in data collection and research. The students will not only benefit from contributing to campus research but build a foundation of knowledge of sustainability, bird biology and identification, active stewardship, and increased well-being through campus walks. Students will be involved in this project through two paid research assistant positions, an independent study course, commissioning indigenous students' designs for retrofitting, student volunteers, and through the collision data app/website, any student or community member can participate in the study. Both research assistants are expected to contribute as co-authors, and students enrolled in the independent study course or as volunteers have the option to be included as an author based on their contributions.
This project will directly affect UW students by offering a local, accessible opportunity to participate in a transdisciplinary project. Conservation research and volunteer opportunities are often located off-campus, requiring additional time and funds to travel to the location. Additionally, some environmental courses do not include field trip costs which often are hundreds of dollars per quarter. Participating in environmental or sustainability projects is often necessary for career development. However, volunteering is privilege-based as the expectation is that all students have extra time and funds to participate. By only asking for a few hours of participation a week, students can build their experience and knowledge on campus without time, financial, or transportation burdens. Further, by allowing for volunteer opportunities, any UW or Seattle community member can participate in the study and enjoy the benefits of connecting with nature without lengthy commitments.
Additionally, the project lead and sponsoring department are committed to supporting and seeking students not traditionally included in environmental conservation practices and design fields to participate in the project. This includes designing monitoring routes that meet the accessibility needs of all students and volunteers.
The project includes the following student roles in addition to the project lead:
- Two paid research positions are required for the project. Each position is 10 hours a week and will be responsible for a few monitoring hours each week, coordinating volunteers, and filling in as needed. Additionally, each position will have detailed tasks.
- The data research assistant position will be in charge of app or website designs, data entry and clean-up, merging collision data with sets of GIS, weather, and design data, running reports, and creating detailed visuals for publication and outreach. The project has recognized informatics major Jacob Harper as qualified to fill this role beginning in Autumn 2022.
- The outreach and education research assistant position will engage the campus and the local community to help recruit students to join the independent study course or volunteer, reach out to indigenous artists and students on campus to commission indigenous artwork to mitigate collisions, plan campus tours for students and architects, and assist with the design perception study. Additionally, this position requires design skills to produce visual outreach materials.
- The independent study course focuses on understanding and mitigating bird building collisions as a conservation issue and sustainable design challenge. This class allows students to participate in one of the first academic courses addressing the topic and earn credits for their involvement in the project. While the background of the course will include literature from multiple locations, local species and design examples will be observed by students on campus. The students will receive 1-2 credits in the course and will be expected to participate in building monitoring.
- Indigenous vinyl murals created by indigenous students or community members will be commissioned for at least one of the mitigation designs to be applied to the surface of a collision hot spot or building.
- Student volunteers will be recruited through campus outreach initiatives such as visiting classes, speaking with student groups, signage, and campus birding tours led by the outreach research assistant and project lead. The volunteers will be asked to monitor buildings for two hours a week during the 49-day monitoring period. After consulting with students on campus, some prefer the flexibility of volunteering rather than enrolling in a class or applying for research positions. The budget includes a placeholder for volunteer recognition breakfasts held once a quarter on the last day of monitoring. This will likely be sponsored by the College of the Built Environments (funding TBD). Additionally, volunteers will be included in bird walks on campus planned for the independent study course.
- Students unable to participate in the course or as a volunteer can still be involved in the project through the data collection app (or website). Data about and photos of a collision victim can be submitted anywhere on or off campus, connecting the student to local biodiversity while supporting the project.