Avian Movements and Wetland Connectivity in Landscape Conservation

Abstract

The current conservation crisis calls for research and management to be carried out on a longterm, multi-species basis at large spatial scales. Unfortunately, scientists, managers, and agencies often are stymied in their effort to conduct these large-scale studies because of a lack of appropriate technology, methodology, and funding. This issue is of particular concern in wetland conservation, for which the standard landscape approach may include consideration of a large tract of land but fail to incorporate the suite of wetland sites frequently used by highly mobile organisms such as waterbirds (e.g., shorebirds, wading birds, waterfowl). Typically, these species have population dynamics that require use of multiple wetlands, but this aspect of their life history has often been ignored in planning for their conservation. We outline theoretical, empirical, modeling, and planning problems associated with this issue and suggest solutions to some current obstacles. These solutions represent a tradeoff between typical in-depth single-species studies and more generic multi-species studies. They include studying within-and among-season movements of waterbirds on a spatial scale appropriate to both widely dispersing and more stationary species; multi-species censuses at multiple sites; further development and use of technology such as satellite transmitters and population-specific molecular markers; development of spatially explicit population models that consider within-season movements of waterbirds; and recognition from funding agencies that landscape-level issues cannot adequately be addressed without support for these types of studies. Movimientos de Aves y Conectividad de Humedales en la Conservación del PaisajeResumen: La actual crísis en la conservación exige de investigación y manejo a desarrollarse en escalas de largo plazo, basada en multiples especies y en espacios grandes. Desafortunadamente, los científicos, manejadores y las agencias frecuentemente ven frustrados sus esfuerzos para conducir estos estudios de gran escala debido a la carencia de tecnología, metodologia y soporte económico apropiados. Este tema es de particular interés en la conservación de humedales donde la perspectiva común de paisaje pudiera considerar un área extensa de tierra pero no incorpora humedales aptos que son frecuentemente usados por organismos con alta movilidad como lo son las aves acuáticas (aves playeras o de vados, ganzos, patos). Tipicamente estas especies tienen dinámicas poblacionales que requiren del uso de multiples humedales, sin embargo, este aspecto de su historia de vida frecuentemente es ignorado en la planeación de su conservación. Resaltamos problemas teóricos, empíricos, de modelado y de planeación asociados con este tema y sugerimos soluciones para algunos obstáculos actuales. Estas soluciones representan un intercambio entre estudios a profundidad de una sola especie y estudios genéricos multiespecie. Estos últimos incluyen el estudio de movimientos de las aves acuáticas entre y dentro estaciones en una esc...

Effect of landscape configuration and habitat quality on the community structure of waterbirds using a man-made habitat

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Plant-water regime management in a wetland: consequences for a floating vegetation-nesting bird, whiskered tern Chlidonias hybridus

“…However, variations in population size for such a migrant species must be examined at much larger spatial and temporal scales than at local scale (e.g. Sadoul 1997;Haig et al 1998). At single colony sites, changes in breeding bird population sizes result from immigration of pairs from other sites.…”

The effect of rice field fragmentation on wintering waterbirds at the landscape level

“…Many landscape factors, such as types of surrounding habitat (Naugle et al 2001;Riffell 2001), the amount of wetland habitat nearby (Fairbairn and Dinsmore 2001;Naugle et al 2001;Taft and Haig 2006), and connectivity to other habitat patches (Haig et al 1997;Guadagnin and Maltchik 2007), may affect the population density of certain species or the composition of teh waterbird assemblage in wetland habitats. Rice fields are a common type of agricultural land.…”