Effects of Different Land use Practices on Bird Communities David Farris Dr. Jianqian Li Dr. Yong Wang

Introduction Why study bird communities  Importance to ecosystem –niche, ecosystem services  Importance to humans-bird watching  Sensitive to habitat change  Birds are effected worldwide by urbanization and city sprawl and other human changes to the environment Why Nanjing?  Nanjing is one of the oldest Chinese cities  large urban population-roughly 8 million  examples of different types of land use are present around the city

Research-Introduction The main question: How are bird communities affected by different types of land use and anthropogenic change?

Methods Point counts were done to survey the species found in different land use types Points were selected at random by Ms. Dawn Lemke and grouped by type: Forest (27), Agriculture (15), Urban (52), and Park (12) in proportion to availability using Google Earth

Methods-2 Points were surveyed in June 2012  early morning and late afternoon Birds were counted by audio and visually (a/v)  for 10 minutes at each point  No capture needed! Behavior, sex/age, and distance information was recorded when available

Some points were harder to get to than others…

Methods 3 After the point counts  data entered into Microsoft Excel  statistical analysis with SPSS We examined:  Total species detected  total numbers of detections  how affected by land use type  and diversity change  Compared habitat types

Results: Abundance Total number of points: 109 Total individuals detected: Audio:39.5% -Visual: 60.5% Figure 2.

Results: Species Richness Total number of species: 53+ Average number of detections per point:14.63±8.2 Average number of species detected per point: 6.22±3.1 (sd) Top 10 species accounted for ~80% of total detections >25 species had ≤ 5 detections

Graph 1. Species detections (number of individuals counted) in Nanjing, China. June 2012.

How Land Use Type Affects Abundance ANOVA TEST: F=12.72; DF=4, 104; p<.001 Forest (27), Agriculture (15), Urban (52, Park (12), and Wetlands (3)

How Land Use Type Affects Species Richness Forest (27), Agriculture (15), Urban (52), Park (12), and Wetlands (3)

Effect of land use Relative Abundance of the top 10 species

Effects of land use on bird communities

Simpson Diversity Index AgricultureForestParkUrban Ds = 1 - Sum1i [ni*(ni-1)]/[N*(N-1)]

Proportional Similarity Measurement ForestAgricultureUrbanPark Forest Agriculture Urban Park Community Similarity-what percent of the bird community is the same in two different habitats?

Behavior of birds

Conclusions/Discussions Land type use affects the bird community -some birds thrive, while others decline and will not be found in urban settings Transition habits-wetlands and agriculture have a higher species richness than urban, forest, and parks

Conclusions The most common birds detected were those that have a preference or at least can thrive in an urban setting It is also important to see what type of behavior different birds exhibit-whether or not they are using the habitat or merely flying over

Cultural Differences and Similarities Different ways of thinking Language Food Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (Bronzer vs. Whitener)

Experiences in China Shanghai, China

Living at NFU and Nanjing

Getting Around

Acknowledgements Dr. Yong Wang Dr. Jianqiang Li Lisa Gardner Dawn Lemke Dr. Changhu Lu Yang Pan Yeduo Ding Tianshi Xiong Nanjing Forestry University Alabama A&M University National Science Foundation