Disentangling the relative importance of changes in climate and land-use intensity in driving recent bird population trends.

ABSTRACT: Threats to biodiversity resulting from habitat destruction and deterioration have been documented for many species, whilst climate change is regarded as increasingly impacting upon species' distribution and abundance. However, few studies have disentangled the relative importance of these two drivers in causing recent population declines. We quantify the relative importance of both processes by modelling annual variation in population growth of 18 farmland bird species in the UK as a function of measures of land-use intensity and weather. Modelled together, both had similar explanatory power in accounting for annual fluctuations in population growth. When these models were used to retrodict population trends for each species as a function of annual variation in land-use intensity and weath

SUBMITTER: Eglington SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3316534 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature