Yearling proportion correlates with habitat structure in a boreal forest landbird community

Landbird vital rates, such as productivity and adult survivorship, can be estimated by modeling mist-netting capture data. The proportion in which an adult breeding bird is 1 year of age (a “yearling”), however, has been studied only minimally in a few landbird species. Here we relate yearling proportion to habitat-structure covariates, including reclamation age, in a boreal forest landbird community. Data were collected at 35 constant-effort mist-netting stations over a 6-year period, and consisted of 12,714 captures of adults, of 29 landbird species, including 4,943 captures of yearlings. Accuracy of age determination (yearling or older) was assessed based on recapture data and error rates were estimated at a mean of 8.1% (range 0.0–19.4%) among the 29 species, with 20 species showing age-error rates <10%. The estimated mean yearling proportion was 0.407, ranging from 0.178 to 0.613 among species. Remote-sensed Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), a measure of habitat greenness, was positively correlated with age since reclamation up to 20 years, at which time it became comparable to that of natural stations. The probability of capturing a yearling for species associated with mature forest was lower at stations with higher EVI and the opposite was the case for species favoring successional habitats. These results suggest that yearling birds are being excluded from preferred breeding habitats by older birds through despotism and/or that yearlings are simply selecting poorer habitat due to lack of breeding experience or other factors. This dynamic appears to be operating in multiple species within this forest landbird community. Captured yearlings may also be “floaters”, or non-breeding individuals not holding territories. However, presuming that yearlings show lower reproductive success whether floating or not, our results suggest that stations with high yearling proportions could be located within sink as opposed to source habitats. Overall, we infer that yearling proportion may become an important vital-rate measure of habitat quality and reclamation efforts, when combined with indices of population size, productivity, reproductive condition and survivorship.

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Awifauna wodno-błotna środkowej Wisły w okresie lęgowym: wpływ działalności człowieka na rozmieszczenie, liczebność i bogactwo gatunkowe

Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae ◽

10.21697/seb.2011.9.2.04 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 67-86 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Dariusz Bukaciński ◽

Monika Bukacińska ◽

Arkadiusz Buczyński

Keyword(s):

Bird Species ◽

Natura 2000 ◽

River Channel ◽

River Valley ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Breeding Sites ◽

Vistula River ◽

Breeding Habitats ◽

Natura 2000 Site ◽

River Bottom

The inventory of birds was conducted in the years 2005-2010 on the Vistula River section between Dęblin (388 km of the river) and Podwierzbie (435 km of the river). The study area includes a southern section of the European Ecological Natura 2000 Site in Poland PLB140004 „Middle Vistula River Valley” (IBA, PL083). In most areas the Vistula flows here within unregulated or relatively little modified riverbed, having features of natural, lowland, braided river. Sandy islands and braid bars within the main channel, steep banks, and old riparian afforestation create the unique breeding habitats of the Vistula River Valley. Especially the river channel habitats provide suitable breeding sites for many rare bird species, constituting some of them the key-breeding sites. There are, however, fragments of several kilometers, where people transformed the Vistula River in a more visible way (Table 1). These are, among others: an urban section within Dęblin boundaries (km 388-393 of the river), a fragment adjacent to Kozienice Power Plant (km 421-426), and the area, where since 2007 gravel for the industry has been mining from the river bottom (km 426-431). The aim of this inventory was the comparison of richness and abundance of breeding bird species associated directly with the river channel on fragments mentioned above. It will allow us to estimate soberly how very the intensity of human utilization of the river affects the distribution of avifauna of the Vistula, determining the richness and abundance of valuable and/or endangered species breeding in a given area.

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Restoration Scaling Approaches to Addressing Ecological Injury: The Habitat-Based Resource Equivalency Method

Environmental Management ◽

10.1007/s00267-019-01245-9 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 161-177 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Mary Baker ◽

Adam Domanski ◽

Terill Hollweg ◽

Jason Murray ◽

Diana Lane ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Natural Resource ◽

Oil Spills ◽

Error Rates ◽

Hazardous Substances ◽

Habitat Equivalency Analysis ◽

Natural Resource Damage Assessment ◽

As Species ◽

Ecological Habitat ◽

Multiple Species ◽

Species Specific

AbstractNatural resource trustee agencies must determine how much, and what type of environmental restoration will compensate for injuries to natural resources that result from releases of hazardous substances or oil spills. To fulfill this need, trustees, and other natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) practitioners have relied on a variety of approaches, including habitat equivalency analysis (HEA) and resource equivalency analysis (REA). The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Habitat-Based Resource Equivalency Method (HaBREM), which integrates REA’s reproducible injury metrics and population modeling with HEA’s comprehensive habitat approach to restoration. HaBREM is intended to evaluate injury and restoration using organisms that use the habitat to represent ecological habitat functions. This paper seeks to expand and refine the use of organism-based metrics (biomass-based REA), providing an opportunity to integrate sublethal injuries to multiple species, as well as the potential to include error rates for injury and restoration parameters. Applied by NRDA practitioners in the appropriate context, this methodology can establish the relationship between benefits of compensatory restoration projects and injuries to plant or animal species within an affected habitat. HaBREM may be most effective where there are appropriate data supporting the linkage between habitat and species gains (particularly regionally specific habitat information), as well as species-specific monitoring data and predictions on the growth, density, productivity (i.e., rate of generation of biomass or individuals), and age distributions of indicator species.

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Feasibility of Using MODIS Products to Simulate Sun-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) in Boreal Forests

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12040680 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 680 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Meng Guo ◽

Jing Li ◽

Shubo Huang ◽

Lixiang Wen

Keyword(s):

Chlorophyll Fluorescence ◽

Boreal Forest ◽

Spatial Resolution ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Mean Squared Error ◽

Gross Primary Production ◽

Coniferous Forest ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Linear Regression Models ◽

Modis Evi

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a novel approach to gain information about plant activity from remote sensing observations. However, there are currently no continuous SIF data produced at high spatial resolutions. Many previous studies have discussed the relationship between SIF and gross primary production (GPP) and showed a significant correlation between them, but few researchers have focused on forests, which are one the most important terrestrial ecosystems. This study takes Greater Khingan Mountains, a typical boreal forest in China, as an example to explore the feasibility of using MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) SIF data to simulate continuous SIF at higher spatial resolutions. The results show that there is no significant correlation between SIF and MODIS GPP at a spatial resolution of 1 km; however, significant correlations between SIF and the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) were found during growing seasons. Furthermore, the broadleaf forest has a higher SIF than coniferous forest because of the difference in leaf and canopy bio-chemical and structural characteristic. When using MODIS EVI to model SIF, linear regression models show average performance (R2 = 0.58, Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) = 0.14 from Julian day 145 to 257) at a 16-day time scale. However, when using MODIS EVI and temperature, multiple regressions perform better (R2 = 0.71, RMSE = 0.13 from Julian day 145 to 241). An important contribution of this paper is the analysis of the relationships between SIF and vegetation indices at different spatial resolutions and the finding that the relationships became closer with a decrease in spatial resolution. From this research, we conclude that the SIF of the boreal forest investigated can mainly be explained by EVI and air temperature.

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The relative importance of environmental factors on the interannual variability of carbon fluxes in the boreal forest

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12470 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mariam El-Amine ◽

Alexandre Roy ◽

Pierre Legendre ◽

Oliver Sonnentag

Keyword(s):

Environmental Factors ◽

Boreal Forest ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽

Carbon Sink ◽

Growing Season ◽

Carbon Uptake ◽

Net Ecosystem Productivity ◽

Ecosystem Productivity ◽

Environmental Controls

<p>As climate change will cause a more pronounced rise of air temperature in northern high latitudes than in other parts of the world, it is expected that the strength of the boreal forest carbon sink will be altered. To better understand and quantify these changes, we studied the influence of different environmental controls (e.g., air and soil temperatures, soil water content, photosynthetically active radiation, normalized difference vegetation index) on the timing of the start and end of the boreal forest growing season and the net carbon uptake period in Canada. The influence of these factors on the growing season carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the boreal forest were also evaluated. There is a need to improve the understanding of the role of the length of the growing season and the net carbon uptake period on the strength of the boreal forest carbon sink, as an extension of these periods might not necessarily result in a stronger carbon sink if other environmental factors are not optimal for carbon sequestration or enhance respiration.</p><p>Here, we used 31 site-years of observation over three Canadian boreal forest stands: Eastern, Northern and Southern Old Black Spruce in Qu&#233;bec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, respectively. Redundancy analyses were used to highlight the environmental controls that correlate the most with the annual net ecosystem productivity and the start and end of the growing season and the net carbon uptake period. Preliminary results show that the timing at which the air temperature becomes positive correlates the most strongly with the start of the net carbon uptake period (r = 0.70, p < 0.001) and the start of the growing season (r = 0.55, p < 0.01). Although the increase of the normalized difference vegetation index also correlates with the start of these periods, a thorough examination of this result shows that the latter happens well before the former. No dependency between any environmental control and the end of the net carbon uptake period was identified. Also, the annual net ecosystem productivity is highly correlated with the length of the net carbon uptake period (r = 0.54, p < 0.01). Other environmental controls such as annual precipitations, the mean annual soil temperature or the maximum yearly normalized difference vegetation index have a smaller impact on the annual net ecosystem productivity. By extending the dataset to include forest stands that represent a wider climate and permafrost variability, we will examine the generalizability of these results.</p>

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Evidence for the buffer effect operating in multiple species at a national scale

Biology Letters ◽

10.1098/rsbl.2014.0930 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 20140930 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Martin J. P. Sullivan ◽

Stuart E. Newson ◽

James W. Pearce-Higgins

Keyword(s):

Population Growth ◽

Population Change ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Bird Species ◽

Buffer Effect ◽

Breeding Bird ◽

Population Growth Rates ◽

National Monitoring ◽

Multiple Species ◽

The Uk

A long-standing aim of ecologists is to understand the processes involved in regulating populations. One such mechanism is the buffer effect, where lower quality habitats are increasingly used as a species reaches higher population densities, with a resultant average reduction in fecundity and survival limiting population growth. Although the buffer effect has been demonstrated in populations of a number of species, a test of its importance in influencing population growth rates of multiple species across large spatial scales is lacking. Here, we use habitat-specific population trends for 85 bird species from long-term national monitoring data (the UK Breeding Bird Survey) to examine its generality. We find that both patterns of population change and changes in habitat preference are consistent with the predictions of the buffer effect, providing support for its widespread operation.

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