Using landscape habitat associations to prioritize areas of conservation action for terrestrial birds

Using landscape habitat associations to prioritize areas of conservation action for terrestrial birds

Predicting species distributions has long been a valuable tool to plan and focus efforts for biodiversity conservation, particularly because such an approach allows researchers and managers to evaluate species distribution changes in response to various threats. Utilizing data from a long-term monitoring program and land cover data sets, we modeled the probability of occupancy and colonization ...

Habitat Associations of Nebraska Birds

Minimizing Landscape Resistance for Habitat Conservation

Modeling ecological connectivity is an area of increasing interest amongst biologists and conservation agencies. In the past few years, different modeling approaches have been used by experts in the field to understand the state of wildlife distribution. One of these approaches is based on modeling land as a resistive network. The analysis of electric current in such networks allows biologists ...

Habitat acquisition strategies for grassland birds in an urbanizing landscape.

Habitat protection for grassland birds is an important component of open space land acquisition in suburban Chicago. We use optimization decision models to develop recommendations for land protection and analyze tradeoffs between alternative goals. One goal is to acquire (and restore if necessary) as much grassland habitat as possible for a given budget. Because a viable habitat for grassland b...

Can habitat specialization patterns of Neotropical birds highlight vulnerable areas for conservation in the Atlantic rainforest, southern Brazil?

Patterns of habitat specialization can be used to infer conservation risks for species whose habitats are being degraded or lost due to anthropogenic activity. We assigned levels of forest type specialization to birds based on their occurrence and local abundance in three basic types of Atlantic rainforest in southern Brazil: seasonal semi-deciduous forest, mixed rainforest, and dense rainfores...