Breeding bird response to partially harvested riparian management zones

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe compared avian communities among three timber harvesting treatments in 45-m wide even-age riparian management zones (RMZs) placed between upland clearcuts and along one side of first-or second-order streams in northern Minnesota, USA. The RMZs had three treatments: (1) unharvested, (2) intermediate residual basal area (RBA) (targeted goal 11.5 m 2 /ha, realized 16.0 m 2 /ha), and (3) low RBA (targeted goal 5.7 m 2 /ha, realized 8.7 m 2 /ha). Surveys were conducted one year pre-harvest and three consecutive years post-harvest. There was no change in species richness, diversity, or total abundance associated with harvest but there were shifts in the types of birds within the community. In particular, White-throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) and Chestnut-sided Warblers (Dendroica pensylvanica) increased while Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla) and Red-eyed Vireos (Vireo olivaceus) decreased. The decline of avian species associated with mature forest in the partially harvested treatments relative to controls indicates that maintaining an unharvested RMZ adjacent to an upland harvest may aid in maintaining avian species associated mature forest in Minnesota for at least three years post-harvest. However, our observations do not reflect reproductive success, which is an area for future research.

Response of bird communities to single-tree selection system harvesting in northern hardwoods: 10–12years post-harvest

“…A fourth-root transformation was used to downweight the contributions of numerically dominant species in calculating similarities between samples, and thereby focus attention on patterns in the whole community, including both common and rarer species (Clarke and Green, 1988). To aid in interpreting the PCoA, we constructed rank abundance curves (Magurran, 2004) to visualize changes in species' contributions (dominance and evenness) to bird community composition over time (Chizinski et al, 2011).…”

Contribution of poplar plantations to bird conservation in riparian landscapes

“…Birds are often considered as efficient indicators as they play an essential functional role in ecosystems at (or near) the top of the food chain (Ormerod and Watkinson 2000;Gregory et al 2005;Gil-Tena et al 2007). Moreover, it is well known that bird diversity can respond rapidly to forest management, such as timber harvesting (Hanowski et al 2007;Vanderwel et al 2007;Chizinski et al 2011) and site preparation (Lane et al 2011). Birds are also responsive to signals that accumulate across local and landscape scales, since bird communities typically select habitat features at multiple scales (MacFaden and Capen 2002;Warren et al 2005;Mitchell et al 2006;Barbaro et al 2007).…”

The importance of forests along submontane stream valleys for bird conservation: The Carpathian example

“…Most likely, the most efficient solution would be to prohibit logging in forests along watercourses, leave them unmanaged, and treat them as buffer strips within managed forests, as can be seen in boreal forests of North America, Scandinavia, and recently in Czech Republic (Šálek et al 2013). Such buffer strips protect adjacent forests from water erosion, but more importantly, sustain higher diversity of plants and animals (Lee and Barker 2005), including birds (Hågvar and Bækken 2005, Shirley and Smith 2005, Kardynal et al 2011, Chizinski et al 2011). Consequently, these forests along submontane stream valleys, if protected or unmanaged, could be treated as excellent reference areas for nature and biodiversity conservation, in Poland but also in all Carpathian countries.…”