Associations of forest bird species richness with housing and landscape patterns across the USA

• Published in: Ecological applications 2007-10, Vol.17 (7), p.1989-2010
• Main Authors: Pidgeon, A.M, Radeloff, V.C, Flather, C.H, Lepczyk, C.A, Clayton, M.K, Hawbaker, T.J, Hammer, R.B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Aves; Biodiversity; Bird nesting; Birds; Breeding Bird Survey (BBS); Ecoregions; Ecosystem; estimated richness; forest; forest birds; Forest cover; Forest ecology; forest habitats; Forests; geographical variation; guilds; Housing; housing density; human impact; human population; human-wildlife relations; Humans; Land cover; landscape; landscape ecology; Mixed forests; National Land Cover Data (NLCD); Population Density; residential areas; Species; species diversity; Trees; U.S. Census; United States; wild birds; woodland
• ISSN: 1051-0761; 1939-5582
• DOI: 10.1890/06-1489.1

In the United States, housing density has substantially increased in and adjacent to forests. Our goal in this study was to identify how housing density and human populations are associated with avian diversity. We compared these associations to those between landscape pattern and avian diversity, and we examined how these associations vary across the conterminous forested United States. Using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the U.S. Census, and the National Land Cover Database, we focused on forest and woodland bird communities and conducted our analysis at multiple levels of model specificity, first using a coarse-thematic resolution (basic models), then using a larger number of fine-thematic resolution variables (refined models). We found that housing development was associated with forest bird species richness in all forested ecoregions of the conterminous United States. However, there were important differences among ecoregions. In the basic models, housing density accounted for