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Biodiversity in cultural landscapes: influence of land use intensity on bird assemblages

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Abstract

Context

Land use changes and intensification have been amongst the major causes of the on-going biodiversity decline in Europe. A better understanding and description of how different levels of land use intensity affect biodiversity can support the planning and evaluation of policy measures.

Objectives

Our study investigates how land use-related landscape characteristics affect bird diversity, considering different spatial scales and species groups with characteristic habitat use.

Methods

We used breeding bird census data from 2693 observation points along 206 transects and applied a random effects hurdle model to describe the influence of the landscape characteristics altitude, forest proportion, patch density, land cover diversity, and land use intensity on avian species richness.

Results

Land use intensity and related landscape characteristics formed an important explanatory variable for bird richness. Increasing land use intensity was accompanied by a decrease in bird species richness. While forest bird richness decreased with a decreasing amount of forest cover, farmland species richness increased. This led to a bird diversity peak in extensively used semi-open landscapes. The influence of land cover diversity on species richness was small. Increasing patch density had positive effects on forest birds, but affected farm birds negatively. The strongest correlation between land use-based indicators and bird diversity was determined using spatial indicators at a close range around observation points (100–500 m radius).

Conclusions

Our results assist interpretation of the Pan-European Common Bird Indices and emphasize the importance of using multifaceted and thoroughly selected indicators in the context of biodiversity monitoring and decision-making support.

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Acknowledgments

This article was funded by the Austrian Climate Research Fund project ‘CAFEE-Climate change in agriculture and forestry: an integrated assessment of mitigation and adaptation measures in Austria’ as well as the collaborative research programme proVISION of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science under Research Contract 100394. Ulrike Tappeiner is a member of the research area ‘Alpine Space—Man and Environment’ at the University of Innsbruck. Special thanks go to all the volunteer observers of the Austrian Common Bird Monitoring Scheme and Mag. Ingeborg Fiala of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (BMLFUW), who prompted this analysis. Finally, we wish to thank the editor Teresa Pinto-Correia and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria

    Johannes Rüdisser & Ulrike Tappeiner

  2. Department of Statistics, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria

    Janette Walde

  3. Institute for Alpine Environment, EURAC, Drususallee 1, 39100, Bozen, Italy

    Erich Tasser & Ulrike Tappeiner

  4. BirdLife Austria, Museumsplatz 1/10/8, 1070, Vienna, Austria

    Johannes Frühauf & Norbert Teufelbauer

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  1. Johannes Rüdisser
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  2. Janette Walde
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  3. Erich Tasser
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  4. Johannes Frühauf
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  5. Norbert Teufelbauer
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  6. Ulrike Tappeiner
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Correspondence to Johannes Rüdisser.

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Rüdisser, J., Walde, J., Tasser, E. et al. Biodiversity in cultural landscapes: influence of land use intensity on bird assemblages. Landscape Ecol 30, 1851–1863 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0215-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0215-3

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