Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Long-Term Responses of Breeding Birds to Climate Change and Reforestation in New York State.

Long-Term Responses of Breeding Birds to Climate Change and Reforestation in New York State.

Zuckerberg, Benjamin

Paperback

Biology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1243511710
ISBN13: 9781243511713
Publisher: Proquest Umi Dissertation Pub
Pages: 174
Weight: 0.79
Height: 0.45 Width: 7.99 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
I studied 20 years of changes in avian distributions in relation to climate change and patterns of habitat availability. The New York State Breeding Bird Atlas consists of over 5,000 25 km2 survey blocks and was conducted in 1980 to 1985 and 2000 to 2005. Surveys of this spatial resolution and temporal scope are globally rare and offer the opportunity to investigate drivers of avian distributional change. I investigated the relationship between regional occupancy and local abundance in breeding bird populations in New York State. I tested the predictions of the abundance-occupancy rule that species will exhibit a positive relationship between occupancy and abundance. Species of high local abundance were the most widespread and species of low local abundance were the most geographically restricted. This relationship was temporally stable and consistent across birds of different breeding habitat and migratory groups. In addition, changes in a species' occupancy were correlated with changes in local abundance. My findings supported the relationship between abundance and occupancy in avian population change. I tested several predictions that bird distributions were shifting in response to rising regional temperatures in New York State. As expected, bird species shifted northward in mean latitude. I predicted that latitudinal shifts would be more evident in northern range boundaries, but found stronger support for northward shifts in southern range boundaries. Counter to my predictions, bird species shifted downhill in their mean elevation and demonstrated no change in upper- or lower-elevational boundaries. I did not find these latitudinal shifts to be explained by changes in overall distribution or life history characteristics. Increases in the distributions of forest breeding birds are likely resulting from species responses to changes in habitat availability in New York State. Testing the predictions of the extinction threshold hypothesis, I found thresholds to be widespread in the long-term responses of 25 forest breeding birds to patterns of forest cover. Thresholds in colonizations and retentions, rather than extinctions, were the most common. Threshold estimates varied widely between species and populations dynamics. I found the influences of forest aggregation to be important above and below thresholds.

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