Title
Importance of scale, land cover, and weather on the abundance of bird species in a managed forest
Campus Units
Natural Resource Ecology and Management
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
12-1-2017
Journal or Book Title
Forest Ecology and Management
Volume
405
First Page
295
Last Page
308
DOI
10.1016/j.foreco.2017.09.057
Abstract
Climate change and habitat loss are projected to be the two greatest drivers of biodiversity loss over the coming century. While public lands have the potential to increase regional resilience of bird populations to these threats, long-term data are necessary to document species responses to changes in climate and habitat to better understand population vulnerabilities. We used generalized linear mixed models to determine the importance of stand-level characteristics, multi-scale land cover, and annual weather factors to the abundance of 61 bird species over a 20-year time frame in Chippewa National Forest, Minnesota, USA. Of the 61 species modeled, we were able to build final models with R-squared values that ranged from 26% to 69% for 37 species; the remaining 24 species models had issues with convergence or low explanatory power (R-squared < 20%). Models for the 37 species show that stand-level characteristics, land cover factors, and annual weather effects on species abundance were species-specific and varied within guilds. Forty-one percent of the final species models included stand-level characteristics, 92% included land cover variables at the 200 m scale, 51% included land cover variables at the 500 m scale, 46% included land cover variables at the 1000 m scale, and 38% included weather variables in best models. Three species models (8%) included significant weather and land cover interaction terms. Overall, models indicated that aboveground tree biomass and land cover variables drove changes in the majority of species. Of those species models including weather variables, more included annual variation in precipitation or drought than temperature. Annual weather variability was significantly more likely to impact abundance of species associated with deciduous forests and bird species that are considered climate sensitive. The long-term data and models we developed are particularly suited to informing science-based adaptive forest management plans that incorporate climate sensitivity, aim to conserve large areas of forest habitat, and maintain an historical mosaic of cover types for conserving a diverse and abundant avian assemblage.
Rights
Works produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Grinde, Alexis R.; Niemi, Gerald J.; Sturtevant, Brian R.; Panci, Hannah; Thogmartin, Wayne; and Wolter, Peter, "Importance of scale, land cover, and weather on the abundance of bird species in a managed forest" (2017). Natural Resource Ecology and Management Publications. 239.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/nrem_pubs/239
Included in
Climate Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Forest Management Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Poultry or Avian Science Commons
Comments
This article is published as Grinde, Alexis R., Gerald J. Niemi, Brian R. Sturtevant, Hannah Panci, Wayne Thogmartin, and Peter Wolter. "Importance of scale, land cover, and weather on the abundance of bird species in a managed forest." Forest Ecology and Management 405 (2017): 295-308. doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2017.09.057.