Birds communities’ responses to urbanization
(2018) BIOM02 20181Degree Projects in Biology
- Abstract
- Cities are expected to increase in extent and land-use intensity in the future. Thus, it is important to understand how overall species diversity responds to increasing urbanization to develop urban biodiversity conservation strategies. In this study, I used birds a biodiversity indicator. Using general linear mixed models, I analyzed how urbanization impacts alpha and beta diversity of birds. In addition, to understand whether increasing urbanization leads to a systematic loss in species richness, I partitioned species dissimilarity across the urban-rural gradient into nestedness and turnover components. The results showed that alpha and beta decreased towards the city center, with stronger decreases in beta diversity. While species... (More)
- Cities are expected to increase in extent and land-use intensity in the future. Thus, it is important to understand how overall species diversity responds to increasing urbanization to develop urban biodiversity conservation strategies. In this study, I used birds a biodiversity indicator. Using general linear mixed models, I analyzed how urbanization impacts alpha and beta diversity of birds. In addition, to understand whether increasing urbanization leads to a systematic loss in species richness, I partitioned species dissimilarity across the urban-rural gradient into nestedness and turnover components. The results showed that alpha and beta decreased towards the city center, with stronger decreases in beta diversity. While species turnover was significant along the urbanization gradient, species nestedness was more strongly contributing to overall community dissimilarity. Hence, increasing urbanization contributes to increasing biotic homogenization by decreasing bird beta diversity through a systematic loss of species. My results indicate that urban bird communities are poorer versions of the surrounding communities. In conclusion, while future city expansion will decrease biodiversity around the globe, my study suggests that increasing size of green urban spaces and increasing tree biodiversity provide key management factors to keep high biodiversity on urban environments. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Helping bird conservation in cities
My projects studies how urbanization is affecting bird communities, to achieve that I study bird communities around the city and inside the city. I selected some factors to represent the effects of cities, those are distance to the city edge, tree biodiversity, green patch size inside the city, etc. As human population is expected to increase, and it is concentrated in cities, cities will cover a bigger part of the earth on the future, it is important to understand how they affect the wild communities and how could be possible the conservation of species within the city.
My results confirm that urbanization is affecting negatively to bird´s biodiversity, on my study, the further away from the city... (More) - Helping bird conservation in cities
My projects studies how urbanization is affecting bird communities, to achieve that I study bird communities around the city and inside the city. I selected some factors to represent the effects of cities, those are distance to the city edge, tree biodiversity, green patch size inside the city, etc. As human population is expected to increase, and it is concentrated in cities, cities will cover a bigger part of the earth on the future, it is important to understand how they affect the wild communities and how could be possible the conservation of species within the city.
My results confirm that urbanization is affecting negatively to bird´s biodiversity, on my study, the further away from the city the higher biodiversity and the other way around. The factors that seems to be modelling this response are patch size and tree biodiversity. Another interesting finding is that beta diversity is more affected than alpha diversity, beta represents the grade of uniqueness between different patches on the city. A very low beta means that all patches have more or less the same species, this is explained by how cities change the environment to a homogenous one across all the city territory.
City planners should use this information to design cities that helps biodiversity conservation. For example, trying to increase the size of the green areas or having a matrix of green areas close enough to serve as one habitat. As well, increasing trees biodiversity will help to have higher biodiversity of birds. One example will be to plant trees from the surrounding habitat, helping autochthonous birds to live on the cities.
Advisor: Johan Ekroos, William Sidemo
Centre for Environmental and Climate Research (CEC) (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8953369
- author
- Reina García, Santiago
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BIOM02 20181
- year
- 2018
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 8953369
- date added to LUP
- 2018-06-27 13:27:36
- date last changed
- 2018-06-27 13:27:36
@misc{8953369,
abstract = {{Cities are expected to increase in extent and land-use intensity in the future. Thus, it is important to understand how overall species diversity responds to increasing urbanization to develop urban biodiversity conservation strategies. In this study, I used birds a biodiversity indicator. Using general linear mixed models, I analyzed how urbanization impacts alpha and beta diversity of birds. In addition, to understand whether increasing urbanization leads to a systematic loss in species richness, I partitioned species dissimilarity across the urban-rural gradient into nestedness and turnover components. The results showed that alpha and beta decreased towards the city center, with stronger decreases in beta diversity. While species turnover was significant along the urbanization gradient, species nestedness was more strongly contributing to overall community dissimilarity. Hence, increasing urbanization contributes to increasing biotic homogenization by decreasing bird beta diversity through a systematic loss of species. My results indicate that urban bird communities are poorer versions of the surrounding communities. In conclusion, while future city expansion will decrease biodiversity around the globe, my study suggests that increasing size of green urban spaces and increasing tree biodiversity provide key management factors to keep high biodiversity on urban environments.}},
author = {{Reina García, Santiago}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Birds communities’ responses to urbanization}},
year = {{2018}},
}