Agricultural landscapes are highly variable ecosystems and are home to many species. Farmland spatial heterogeneity and phenological and inter-annual agricultural landscape dynamics has been shown to be related to species diversity. Remote sensing provides data that enable monitoring landscape changes at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The goal of this research was to determine the response of biodiversity to phenological and inter-annual landscape dynamics. The study area is the predominantly agricultural region of eastern Ontario. Ninety-three sample landscapes were selected prior to this research. Biodiversity data were collected during the summers of 2011 and 2012 within a 1 × 1 km area at each landscape. This extent and 3 × 3 km were selected for this research to analyze the impacts of spatial scale on biodiversity response. Relationships between biodiversity and vegetation phenology were modelled using MODIS NDVI, while relationships between biodiversity and long term inter-annual vegetation changes were modelled using Landsat NDVI and Tasseled Cap components. Random Forest Regression was used to determine relative variable importance over the many biodiversity models produced. The most important variables were identified and subsequently used in step-wise regression to determine model significance, the landscape variables entered, and the direction of their relationship with biodiversity. Results demonstrated that phenological and inter-annual changes in vegetation dynamics were related to biodiversity. For MODIS, most 3 × 3 km models were significant, whereas most 1 × 1 km models were not. For Landsat, model performance was not consistently different for the two extents, indicating that model performance can depend on landscape extent when coarse spatial resolution data are used. Plant diversity was lower when the time of onset of greenness I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Doug King for taking me on as a student, mentoring me and supporting me both academically and emotionally both during my whole PhD journey and the thesis process. Thank you for encouraging me during hard times and having faith in me and my way and thank you for all you time and energy and being available to discuss various issues throughout this entire process. I also would like to thank my committee members Dr. Scott Mitchell and Dr. Dennis Duro for providing valuable advice and feedback throughout various stages of this thesis. I would like to thank the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University for providing me with great financial support and scholarships, teaching assistantship and instructor positions. I am grateful to the Geomatics and Landscape Ecology (GLEL) Lab and to NSERC for providing the funding for this research through a Strategic Project Grant to Drs. Fahrig, King, Lindsay and Mitchell and through a Discovery Grant to Dr. King. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, Science and Technology Branch, Earth Observation (STB...

The impact of agriculture on biodiversity depends on the extent and types of 23 agriculture and the degree to which agricultural land contrasts with the natural ecosystem. Most 24 research on the latter comes from studies on the influence of different agricultural types within a 25 single ecosystem with far less study on how the natural ecosystem context shapes the response of 26 biodiversity to agricultural production. We used citizen science data from agricultural areas in 27 Canada's Eastern Hardwood-Boreal (forest ecosystem, n=108 landscapes) and Prairie Pothole 28 (prairie ecosystem, n=99) regions to examine how ecosystem context shapes the response of 29 avian species diversity, functional diversity and abundance to the amount of arable crop and 30 pastoral agriculture at landscape scales. Avian surveys were conducted along 8km transects of 31 Breeding Bird Survey routes with land cover assembled within a 20km 2 landscape around each 32 transect. The amount of agriculture at which species diversity peaked differed between the forest 33 (15%) and prairie (51%) ecosystems, indicating that fewer species tolerated the expansion of 34 agriculture in the former. In both ecosystems, functional diversity initially increased with 35 agriculture and peaked at higher amounts (forest: 42%, prairie: 77%) than species diversity 36 suggesting that functional redundancy was lost first as agriculture increased. Species turnover 37 with increasing agriculture was primarily among functional groups in forest where a shift from a 38 low to a high agriculture landscape led to a decline in the percent of the community represented 39 by Neotropical migrants, insectivores, upper foliage gleaners and bark foragers, and an increase 40 in the percent of the community represented by short-distance migrants, granivores, omnivores 41 and ground gleaners. There were few distinct shifts in the percent of the community represented 42 by different functional groups in the prairie ecosystem. Total abundance was the least sensitive 43 measure examined in both ecosystems and indicated that species losses with agriculture are 44 likely followed by numerical compensation from agriculture tolerant species. Our results 45 3 highlight the importance of ecosystem context for understanding how biodiversity is affected by 46 agricultural production with declines in diversity occurring at lower agricultural extents in 47 ecosystems with lower similarity between natural and agricultural land covers. These findings 48 allow for more specific conservation recommendations including managing for species intolerant 49 to agriculture in prairie ecosystems and limiting the expansion of high contrast agriculture and 50 the loss of semi-natural habitat, such as hedge rows, in historically forested ecosystems.51 52