Developing indicators for European birds

Abstract

The global pledge to deliver 'a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010' is echoed in a number of regional and national level targets. There is broad consensus, however, that in the absence of conservation action, biodiversity will continue to be lost at a rate unprecedented in the recent era. Remarkably, we lack a basic system to measure progress towards these targets and, in particular, we lack standard measures of biodiversity and procedures to construct and assess summary statistics. Here, we develop a simple classification of biodiversity indicators to assist their development and clarify purpose. We use European birds, as example taxa, to show how robust indicators can be constructed and how they can be interpreted. We have developed statistical methods to calculate supranational, multi-species indices using population data from national annual breeding bird surveys in Europe. Skilled volunteers using standardized field methods undertake data collection where methods and survey designs differ slightly across countries. Survey plots tend to be widely distributed at a national level, covering many bird species and habitats with reasonable representation. National species' indices are calculated using log-linear regression, which allows for plot turnover. Supranational species' indices are constructed by combining the national species' indices weighted by national population sizes of each species. Supranational, multi-species indicators are calculated by averaging the resulting indices. We show that common farmland birds in Europe have declined steeply over the last two decades, whereas woodland birds have not. Evidence elsewhere shows that the main driver of farmland bird declines is increased agricultural intensification. We argue that the farmland bird indicator is a useful surrogate for trends in other elements of biodiversity in this habitat.

Plant functional types and traits as biodiversity indicators for tropical forests: two biogeographically separated case studies including birds, mammals and termites

“…However, selection of such indicators remains predominantly intuitive rather than evidence-based (Howard et al 1997;Lawton et al 1998;Watt 1998;Noss 1999;Dudley et al 2005;Kessler et al 2011;Le et al 2012) and there remains the challenge of distinguishing change that can be attributed to external anthropogenic factors from underlying natural processes (Magurran et al 2010). Candidate indicators such as landscape metrics, remotely-sensed variables, multi-species indices and formulated measures of ecosystem complexity or genetic diversity have found wide application but are of limited practicality in forests (UNEP-CBD 1996; Kapos et al 2001;Delbaere 2002; European Academies' Science Advisory Council (ESAC) 2004; Gregory et al 2005;Duraiappah and Naeem 2005). Thus forest biodiversity surveys still maintain a taxonomic focus even though the costs of obtaining sufficient sampling can be high and the utility of any one species, or another single taxon, as a predictor of others remains uncertain (Lawton et al 1998;Watt et al 1998;Dufrêne and Legendre 1997;UNEP/CBD 2003;Gregory et al 2005, but see also Schulze et al 2004).…”

“…Candidate indicators such as landscape metrics, remotely-sensed variables, multi-species indices and formulated measures of ecosystem complexity or genetic diversity have found wide application but are of limited practicality in forests (UNEP-CBD 1996; Kapos et al 2001;Delbaere 2002; European Academies' Science Advisory Council (ESAC) 2004; Gregory et al 2005;Duraiappah and Naeem 2005). Thus forest biodiversity surveys still maintain a taxonomic focus even though the costs of obtaining sufficient sampling can be high and the utility of any one species, or another single taxon, as a predictor of others remains uncertain (Lawton et al 1998;Watt et al 1998;Dufrêne and Legendre 1997;UNEP/CBD 2003;Gregory et al 2005, but see also Schulze et al 2004). Further, at large spatial scales where within-region diversity is large, higher level taxa (up to family level) must often be used (Villaseñor et al 2005), but even this is only justifiable where extensive species data are already available (Sarkar et al 2005).…”

Economic Analysis for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis and Scenario Valuation of Changes in Ecosystem Services

“…Birds are one of the most widely observed aspects of UK biodiversity; they are also high in the food chain and are often considered to be good indicators of wider ecosystem health (e.g. Gregory et al 2005). Birds are more mobile than most other groups, and so will respond to, and reflect, environmental quality at a rather broader scale than mammals or terrestrial insects, for example.…”

European species and habitat monitoring: where are we now?

“…DiYculties in this approach, such as the sensitivity of morphotypes to diVerences among habitats, and variation in morphotype identiWcation, are discussed by Abadie et al (this issue). The example on butterXy monitoring in Europe (Van Swaay et al, this issue) might provide a good blueprint for the establishment of monitoring networks for groups other than the-so intensively monitored-birds (Gregory et al 2005; European Environment Agency (EEA) 2007). ButterXy monitoring schemes are aimed at assessing regional and national trends in butterXy abundance per species, and have created a network between regional and national coordinators in diVerent countries.…”