PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 70: Avian Ecology: Habitat; Human Impact
Tuesday, August 9, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 524 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Housing and human population density are significant predictors of richness in forest bird species guilds.
Pidgeon, Anna*,1, Radeloff, Volker1, Lepczyk, Christopher1, Flather, Curtis2, Hammer, Roger1, 1 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA2 Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, CO, USA
ABSTRACT- Housing density growth is receiving increasing attention due to its role in fire hazard protection, loss of farmland, and changes in wildlife habitat characteristics, and has been found to be a significant predictor of overall bird species richness. Our goal here was to elucidate this relationship further by analyzing a variety of forest bird species guilds including forest and woodland species, forest interior species, neotropocial migrant species, cavity nesters, and synanthropic species. Avian species richness was estimated from North American Breeding Bird Survey data; housing and human population data from the U.S. Decennial Census, and landcover data from the USGS National Land Cover Database. Regression analysis was conducted to determine the relative importance of human population, housing growth, and landcover as predictors of guild richness across the conterminous U.S., stratified by ecoregions. We found that housing and/or human population density were significant variables in the majority of the model calculated for different forest bird species guilds. Predictive power of the model varied, with strong models accounting for 50 to 70% of the variation (standard R2) in richness for ground nesting species, neo-tropical migrants, short distance migrants, and permanent residents in some ecoregions. These results suggest that housing density and human population density are important drivers of bird habitat occupancy patterns throughout the U.S. and ongoing development may pose a serious threat to forest bird populations.
Key words: avian, richness, housing, forest