Bird community responses to cattle stocking rates in a Pacific Northwest bunchgrass prairie

In 2006-2010, effects of four different cattle stocking rates (0, 14.4, 28.8, and 43.2 animal unit months) were compared, representing 0%, 20%, 32%, and 46% utilization of vegetation by domestic livestock, on vegetation structure (as indexed by visual obstruction), and songbird population and apparent nest density, community composition, and diversity in a Pacific Northwest bunchgrass prairie in northeastern Oregon, USA. Overall paddock-level visual obstruction decreased and structural heterogeneity increased with increasing stocking rates, and those effects carried over 1 year after grazing had ceased. Most species were able to locate nesting sites regardless of differences in visual obstruction, except western meadowlark and vesper sparrow, for which obstruction was lower in paddocks with higher stocking rates. Apparent nest density for grasshopper sparrows was negatively affected by higher stocking rates. Grazing effects on absolute songbird population density were restricted to negative effects of higher stocking rates on savannah sparrows, but this relationship was not observed until 1 year after grazing had ceased. Songbird community composition differed between control and heavily-grazed paddocks, driven by an increase in the proportion of horned larks and a decrease in the proportion of savannah sparrows in heavily-grazed paddocks from pre-treatment to post-treatment years. Bird diversity indices were unaffected by stocking rate. Negative effects of high stocking rates on densities of two species and the absence of any clear positive effect for the other three species suggest high stocking rates as applied in this experiment may not provide suitable habitat for all grassland songbirds. The absence of negative responses of density to low and moderate stocking rates suggests these grazing regimes generally provided suitable habitat for all species.     

城市中不同生境下鸟类群落特征研究

2004年1月至2004年12月,对内蒙古自治区呼和浩特市市区7种不同生态环境类型中的鸟类进行了调查研究。研究结果显示:商业区和交通占地中的鸟类群落最为相似,苗圃和公园中的鸟类群落较为相似。景观水平和干扰因素(样带至市中心的距离、噪音、建筑指标)对鸟类的分布、密度、多样性和丰富度具有不同程度的影响。分析表明,人为干扰影响鸟类多样性、群落结构和生态分布。     

山东省鸟类资源现状、保护及合理开发利用对策

本文阐述了山东省鸟类区系的组成,提出了鸟类资源的合理开发利用及保护对策     

Forest Health Monitoring in the United States: First Four Years

To address the need for more effective methods for evaluating and assessing forest ecosystem health, the USDA-Forest Service and the US Environmental Protection Agency through its Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program developed the Forest Health Monitoring program. The program was initiated in 1990 and by 1994 was present in the major areas of the United States. This paper presents an overview of the program, the indicators and methods developed for the program, and some of the results after four years of monitoring and research.     

Species- and tissue-specific accumulation of Dechlorane Plus in three terrestrial passerine bird species from the Pearl River Delta, South China

Little data is available on the bioaccumulation of Dechlorane Plus (DP) in terrestrial organisms. Three terrestrial passerine bird species, light-vented bulbul, long-tailed shrike, and oriental magpie-robin, were collected from rural and urban sites in the Pearl River Delta to analyze for the presence of DP and its dechlorinated products in muscle and liver tissues. The relationships between trophic level and concentration and isomeric composition of DP in birds were also investigated based on stable nitrogen isotope analysis. DP levels had a wide range from 3.9 to 930 ng g⁻¹ lipid weight (lw) in muscle and from 7.0 to 1300 ng g⁻¹ lw in liver. Anti-Cl₁₁-DP and syn-Cl₁₁-DP, two dechlorinated products of DP, were also detected in bird samples with concentrations ranged between not detected (nd)-41 and nd-7.6 ng g⁻¹ lw, respectively. DP preferentially accumulated in liver rather than in muscle for all three bird species. Birds had significantly higher concentrations of DP in urban sites than in rural sites (mean, 300 vs 73 ng g⁻¹ lw). The fractions of anti-DP (f_anti) were higher in birds collected in rural sites than in urban sites. Significant positive correlation between DP levels and δ¹⁵N values but significant negative correlation between f_anti and δ¹⁵N values were found for birds in both urban and rural sites, indicating that trophic level of birds play an important role in determining DP level and isomeric profile.     

基于中低分辨率遥感影像的分类方法对比研究——以鄱阳湖水鸟栖息地遥感分类为例

选取中国鄱阳湖南矶山湿地为研究范围,通过分析候鸟在越冬期的栖息特征,构建适宜于提取候鸟栖息地的湿地分类系统。以Landsat8卫星OLI遥感影像为数据源,采用面向对象分类方法,通过多尺度分割、特征提取和决策树建立等关键步骤,实现湿地信息的快速提取;通过与传统像元法的分类结果对比,系统分析了面向对象方法在基于中低分辨率遥感影像的湿地信息提取中的有效性。研究表明:在面向对象湿地信息提取中,构建不同等级的分割尺度,在多个尺度上提取同一地物,可以更好识别复杂的湿地景观类型;相比仅依据像元光谱特征进行分类的传统像元方法,面向对象方法综合利用光谱、空间、形状和纹理等多种特征,因此可以获得更高的精度(总体分类精度达到87.64%,Kappa系数为 0.855 2);基于中低分辨率遥感影像,采用面向对象分类方法,能够获得较高精度的湿地景观分布,是一种成本较低且行之有效的技术手段。     

Effects of Natura 2000 on nontarget bird and butterfly species based on citizen science data

The European Union's Natura 2000 (N2000) is among the largest international networks of protected areas. One of its aims is to secure the status of a predetermined set of (targeted) bird and butterfly species. However, nontarget species may also benefit from N2000. We evaluated how the terrestrial component of this network affects the abundance of nontargeted, more common bird and butterfly species based on data from long-term volunteer-based monitoring programs in 9602 sites for birds and 2001 sites for butterflies. In almost half of the 155 bird species assessed, and particularly among woodland specialists, abundance increased (slope estimates ranged from 0.101 [SD 0.042] to 3.51 [SD 1.30]) as the proportion of landscape covered by N2000 sites increased. This positive relationship existed for 27 of the 104 butterfly species (estimates ranged from 0.382 [SD 0.163] to 4.28 [SD 0.768]), although most butterflies were generalists. For most species, when land-cover covariates were accounted for these positive relationships were not evident, meaning land cover may be a determinant of positive effects of the N2000 network. The increase in abundance as N2000 coverage increased correlated with the specialization index for birds, but not for butterflies. Although the N2000 network supports high abundance of a large spectrum of species, the low number of specialist butterflies with a positive association with the N2000 network shows the need to improve the habitat quality of N2000 sites that could harbor open-land butterfly specialists. For a better understanding of the processes involved, we advocate for standardized collection of data at N2000 sites.     

Mediation of area and edge effects in forest fragments by adjacent land use

Habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation have pervasive detrimental effects on tropical forest biodiversity, but the role of the surrounding land use (i.e., matrix) in determining the severity of these impacts remains poorly understood. We surveyed bird species across an interior-edge-matrix gradient to assess the effects of matrix type on biodiversity at 49 different sites with varying levels of landscape fragmentation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest—a highly threatened biodiversity hotspot. Both area and edge effects were more pronounced in forest patches bordering pasture matrix, whereas patches bordering Eucalyptus plantation maintained compositionally similar bird communities between the edge and the interior and exhibited reduced effects of patch size. These results suggest the type of matrix in which forest fragments are situated can explain a substantial amount of the widely reported variability in biodiversity responses to forest loss and fragmentation.     

From Population Viability Analysis to Coviability of Farmland Biodiversity and Agriculture

Substantial declines in farmland biodiversity have been reported in Europe for several decades. Agricultural changes have been identified as a main driver of these declines. Although different agrienvironmental schemes have been implemented, their positive effect on biodiversity is relatively unknown. This raises the question as to how to reconcile farming production and biodiversity conservation to operationalize a sustainable and multifunctional agriculture. We devised a bioeconomic model and conducted an analysis based on coviability of farmland biodiversity and agriculture. The coviability approach extended population viability analyses by including bioeconomic risk. Our model coupled stochastic dynamics of both biodiversity and farming land‐uses selected at the microlevel with public policies at the macrolevel on the basis of financial incentives (taxes or subsidies) for land uses. The coviability approach made it possible for us to evaluate bioeconomic risks of these public incentives through the probability of satisfying a mix of biodiversity and economic constraints over time. We calibrated the model and applied it to a community of 34 common birds in metropolitan France at the small agricultural regions scale. We identified different public policies and scenarios with tolerable (0–0%) agroecological risk and modeled their outcomes up to 2050. Budgetary, economic, and ecological (based on Farmland Bird Index) constraints were essential to understanding the set of viable public policies. Our results suggest that some combinations of taxes on cereals and subsidies on grasslands could be relevant to develop a multifunctional agriculture. Moreover, the flexibility and multicriteria viewpoint underlying the coviability approach may help in the implementation of adaptive management. Del Análisis de Viabilidad Poblacional a la Co‐Viabilidad de la Agricultura y la Biodiversidad de las Tierras de Cultivo     

飞机抗鸟撞的预警动力学模型

为预防鸟撞事故,根据事故发生过程和开放系统的熵演变过程有很大相似性这一特点,采用信息熵理论解释事故发生过程,进而建立鸟撞事故发生和预警的动力学模型,揭示引发事故的主要原因和预防事故的对策。在此基础上,采用基于熵的综合评价方法,对造成事故的多个因素进行对比分析和综合评价,得出鸟撞事故中飞行时间(季节和昼夜2个因素)、飞行高度、飞机的结构、遭遇的鸟类和发生区域等5大类共6个因素的熵值。结果表明,飞鸟种类的熵值最大,为0.410 6;其次是飞机结构因素。因此,预防鸟撞事故应该从飞鸟控制和飞机结构设计着手。