Abandoned farmlands enrich bird communities

Date: August 3, 2018

Source:  Hokkaido University

Agriculture and conversion of pristine lands into urban or industrial areas have exerted immense pressure on the natural biota due to habitat destruction and fragmentation in industrialized countries around the world. But since the 1900s, farmlands have been increasingly abandoned due to the decline in domestic agriculture and, in some countries, a decline in population. This yields an opportunity for abandoned farmlands to be used as rehabilitation zones for grassland, wetland, and forest animals. However, it has so far remained unclear how valuable for sustaining specific animal communities farmlands, abandoned farmlands, and natural habitats are relative to each other.

Hokkaido University's Futoshi Nakamura and his collaborators including Yuichi Yamaura of Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, studied bird species distribution over an area in central Hokkaido, Japan. The group then correlated abundance and species richness of different bird communities with different degrees of farmland abandonment and the landscape structure. Mapped back onto the landscape of the known composition, this allowed them to evaluate the potential to conserve different bird communities if existing farmlands in a given area were to be abandoned.

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Are human behaviors affecting bird communities in residential areas?

Similar patterns in bird communities observed across geographically different 'exurban' ecosystems

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY

A new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society shows that habitat alteration may be less important than other factors- such as human behavior- in driving the effects of "exurban" development on bird communities. These unexpected results are fueling more questions that may ultimately lead to informed landowners lessening their impacts on local wildlife.

Exurban development is generally rural residential development in attractive natural areas characterized by low density and large lot sizes. Through myriad impacts including the fragmentation of habitat, disruption of animal movement patterns, and predation or disturbance from domestic pets, this type of development can result in altered wildlife abundance, species composition and behavior in a surrounding ecosystem.

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Oil, gas development homogenizing core-forest bird communities

Date:

May 21, 2014

Source:

Penn State

Summary:

Conventional oil and gas development in northern Pennsylvania altered bird communities, and the current massive build-out of shale-gas infrastructure may accelerate these changes, according to researchers. The commonwealth's Northern Tier -- one of the largest blocks of Eastern deciduous forest in the entire Appalachian region -- is an important breeding area for neotropical migrant songbirds. These diminutive, insect-eating creatures, which breed in Pennsylvania and winter in Central and South America, contribute greatly to the health of forests.

Continued

Exurban Residences Impact Bird Communities Up to 200 Meters Away, Study Finds

Feb. 25, 2013 — According to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), impacts to bird communities from a single rural, "exurban" residence can extend up to 200 meters into the surrounding forest. The study also determined that sensitive bird species such as the hermit thrush and scarlet tanager prefer unbroken forests with no houses. Others, like the blue jay and black-capped chickadee, seem to like having, and often thrive with, human neighbors.

As part of the study, scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park. Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences, they determined that "human-adapted" species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests, and that "human-sensitive" species were 26 percent less likely. Beyond 200 meters, occupancy rates were similar to the surrounding forest.

The report appears in the current online edition of the Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning. Authors of the study are Drs. Michale Glennon and Heidi Kretser of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130225131535.htm