Dynamic availability of early successional piping plover nesting habitat at Cape Lookout National Seashore, North Carolina, USA
Early successional species like piping plovers ( Charadrius melodus ) rely on storms and other natural disturbances to create and maintain habitat on coastal landscapes, but anticipating year-to-year habitat availability for management purposes is difficult where dynamic conditions persist. Our objective was to understand how piping plover nesting habitat changed over an eight-year period (imagery years 2014–2022) at Cape Lookout National Seashore, North Carolina, United States of America. We mapped habitat availability using a Bayesian network habitat selection model and analyses of digital elevation models and aerial imagery from the years 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022. We found an approximately two-fold fluctuation in habitat area from a minimum 4.56 km 2 (2017) to a maximum 8.31 km 2 (2014) within this period. The majority of habitat occurred in backshore areas and geomorphic settings created through storm overwash and outwash. Piping plovers favored persistent habitats that were available in the same location for multiple years and demonstrated variability in their use of newly created habitats. Although birds nested in storm-created overwash/outwash features and backshore areas in high percentages, we did not find correlations between habitat area and the time since the last storm occurred nor the number of storms that came within 200 nautical miles of North Carolina in a 12-month period. We also did not find significant correlations between habitat area and average annual productivity nor number of breeding pairs. This suggests that the population may not be habitat-limited or that habitat alone is not driving population decline at this location. While overwash was instrumental in creating early successional sand flats, outwash caused by sound-side flooding created dozens of new ponds that formed nesting-foraging habitat mosaics that could be of value to nesting piping plovers and their chicks.