The effects of land sparing and wildlife-friendly practices on grassland bird abundance within organic farmlands

Quinn, John E.; Brandle, James R.; Johnson, Ron J.

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2012.07.021

Cited by 38 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…These data contribute to the land sparing/land sharing discussion; providing an example where farm-scale land sparing, in this case woodland patches, is complemented by land sharing in the adjacent crop matrix. Further data are needed for other farmland birds in North America, including both shrubland and grassland species [28,53], particularly those populations in decline in regions where organic farming is practiced at a sufficiently large scale to contribute to species conservation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Organic farms in the Great Plains region involve row crop and small grain production and livestock grazing. Land use associated with organic farms in the region include high and low intensity crops, pasture, and non-crop natural areas [28]. Common crops in the region include corn (Zea mays), soybean (Glycine max), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and alfalfa (Medicago sativa).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Those farms with livestock devote a significant portion to pasture. Non-crop land cover includes riparian buffers, windbreaks of various tree and shrub species, fruit trees, grass strips adjacent to fields and grassland patches spared from crop production [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Influence of Different Cover Types on American Robin Nest Success in Organic Agroecosystems

2013

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There are many opportunities for biodiversity conservation in organic farm systems. Successful and sustainable conservation efforts in organic systems, however, need to measure appropriate outcomes. In particular, data are needed on the breeding success of associated wildlife species. We measured nesting success of the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) in woodlands embedded within eight organic farms in eastern Nebraska. We modeled daily nest survival rate to identify land use and land cover patterns that optimize conservation of birds in organic farm systems. The percentage of a crop in the fields adjacent to linear woodlands best predicted daily survival rate. Daily survival rate was lower in fields adjacent to wheat and greater in woodlands adjacent to soybean fields, though the latter may be a weak effect. There was no evidence that reducing the area allocated to organic crop production would improve daily survival rate but rather an evidence of a patch-matrix interaction. These results suggest that, if suitable nesting sites exist, organic farmers can complement local conservation efforts without losing working farmland.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Influence of Different Cover Types on American Robin Nest Success in Organic Agroecosystems

2013

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“…There is a clear need to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem services into the management of agroecosystems (Perrings et al 2006, Pretty et al 2010, Quinn 2012. Furthermore, given evidence supporting the need to include local stakeholders (Dawson et al 2008, Persha et al 2011, Fischer et al 2012, it is clear that farmers must be involved in the process of local management for biodiversity and ecosystem services, that tools need to be suitable for farmer use (Lightfoot and Noble 2001, Darnhofer et al 2010, Cerf et al 2012, and that management must consider suitable scales (Darnhofer et al 2010).…”

Section: Scale Of Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We sampled avian communities during the summer breeding seasons of 2007-2009 as part of an associated project (Quinn et al 2012). Land use and land cover data were provided by individual farmers, USDA, and USFWS and verified during farm visits.…”

Section: Great Plains Organic Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

A farm-scale biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment tool: the healthy farm index

Quinn

Brandle

Johnson

2012

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability

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This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Natural Resources, School of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska -Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Papers in Natural Resources by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska -Lincoln.Quinn, John E.; Brandle, James R.; and Johnson, Ron J., "A farm-scale biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment tool: The healthy farm index" (2013 AbstractFarm management focused on maximizing biomass production results in biological simplification and ultimately a degraded production potential for the future. Despite the large and growing body of evidence pointing to the need to restore biodiversity to farm systems, incorporation of biodiversity and ecosystem services into local agricultural land use decision-making remains limited. The lack of planned and associated biodiversity may reduce resiliency of local managed ecosystems and add management costs; however, the tradeoff for individual landowners of greater diversity is increased management complexity and uncertainty. To assist farmers in managing biodiversity and to encourage ecological thinking, we developed the Healthy Farm Index, a farm-scale tool that complements existing farm assessment tools by integrating multiple metrics and outputs suitable for applied decision-making and annual evaluation. In this article, we describe the impetus for the index development and the structure of the index and through a case study apply the index and discuss its varied outputs and applications.

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Substituting space for time: Bird responses to forest loss in space provide a general picture of responses over time

Attinello,

Fahrig,

Smith

et al. 2023

Ecological Applications

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The practice of space‐for‐time substitution assumes that the responses of species or communities to land use change over space represents how they will respond to that same change over time. Space‐for‐time substitution is commonly used in both ecology and conservation, but whether the assumption produces reliable insights remains inconclusive. Here, we tested space‐for‐time substitution using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and Global Forest Change (GFC) to compare the effects of landscape‐scale forest cover on bird richness and abundance over time and space, for 25 space‐time comparisons. Each comparison consisted of a landscape that experienced at least 20% forest loss over 19 years (temporal site), and a set of 15‐19 landscapes (spatial sites) that represented the same forest cover gradient over space in 2019 as experienced over time in their corresponding temporal site. Across the 25 comparisons, the observed responses of forest and open‐habitat birds to forest cover over time generally aligned with their responses to forest cover over space, but with comparatively higher variability in the magnitude and direction of effect across the 25 temporal slopes than across the 25 spatial slopes. On average, the mean differences between the spatial and temporal slopes across the 25 space‐time comparisons frequently overlapped with zero, suggesting that the spatial slopes are generally informative of the temporal slopes. However, we observed high variability around these mean differences indicating that a single spatial slope is not strongly predictive of its corresponding temporal slope. We suggest that our results may be explained by annual variability in other relevant environmental factors that combine to produce complex effects on population abundances over time that are not easily captured by snapshots in space. While not being a 1:1 proxy, measuring bird responses to changes in habitat amount in space provides an idea on how birds might be expected to eventually equilibrate to similar changes in habitat amount over time. Further, analyses such as this could be potentially used to screen for cases of regional space‐time mismatches where population‐limiting factors other than habitat could be playing a more important role in the population trends observed there.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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The effects of land sparing and wildlife-friendly practices on grassland bird abundance within organic farmlands

Cited by 38 publications

References 46 publications

The Influence of Different Cover Types on American Robin Nest Success in Organic Agroecosystems

The Influence of Different Cover Types on American Robin Nest Success in Organic Agroecosystems

A farm-scale biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment tool: the healthy farm index

Substituting space for time: Bird responses to forest loss in space provide a general picture of responses over time

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