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Associations between multiscale landscape characteristics and breeding bird abundance and diversity across urban-rural gradients in Northeastern Georgia, USA

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Abstract

Urbanization is rapidly changing the southeastern US landscape, particularly in Georgia within and around the Atlanta metropolitan area, the fastest-growing Southeastern population center. Landscape characteristics related to human disturbance, landscape composition, and landscape configuration vary across the urban-rural gradient and are easily and inexpensively evaluated using geographic information systems (GIS). Previous studies have suggested that avian communities and populations respond in scale-dependent ways to urbanization-related landscape changes through changes in abundance and diversity. We conducted a 2-year study (2007–2008) of the response of breeding bird population abundance, community abundance, species richness, and relative diversity in young and mature single-family residential areas to 15 landscape characteristics measured at multiple spatial scales across urban-rural development intensity gradients near Athens, Georgia. We grouped birds by species, entire site assemblage, and by functional guild affiliation. Our models suggest strong relationships between the landscape and both community and population abundance of birds, as well as a somewhat weaker relationship with species richness. We detected only a weak relationship between breeding season relative diversity and landscape characteristics; we hypothesize a possible seasonal component to that relationship based on an earlier study. Our results suggest that widely available geospatial metrics of human disturbance and landscape pattern can be used to model breeding bird abundance and diversity across urban-rural gradients. This study sets the framework for a landscape scale understanding of the effects of housing developments and development intensity on breeding birds in northeastern Georgia and such a landscape-based approach to modeling species numbers represents a valuable tool in natural resources management.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Robert Cooper, Sara Schweitzer, Rudolph Parrish, Caryn Thompson, and Todd Schneider for their support during this project. Two anonymous reviewers provided substantive comments that significantly improved the manuscript. Funding and support was provided by the University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, the American Ornithologists’ Union, and the Georgia Ornithological Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Box 9690, Mississippi State, MS, 39762, USA

    Michael C. Parrish

  2. Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, 180 Green Street, Athens, GA, 30602–2152, USA

    Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman

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  1. Michael C. Parrish
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  2. Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman
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Correspondence to Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman.

Appendix A

Appendix A

  Guild group assignments for bird species used in analyses
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Parrish, M.C., Hepinstall-Cymerman, J. Associations between multiscale landscape characteristics and breeding bird abundance and diversity across urban-rural gradients in Northeastern Georgia, USA. Urban Ecosyst 15, 559–580 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-011-0191-6

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