0000000000373203
AUTHOR
Sergi Herrando
Consistent response of bird populations to climate change on two continents
Global climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. Large-scale analyses have generally focused on the impacts of climate change on the geographic ranges of species, and on phenology, the timing of ecological phenomena. Here, we use long-term monitoring of the abundance of breeding birds across Europe and the USA to produce, for both regions, composite population indices for two groups of species: those for which climate suitability has been either improving or declining since 1980. The ratio of these composite indices, the Climate Impact Indicator (CII), reflects the divergent fates of species favored or disadvantaged by climate change. The trend in CII is positive and similar in the …
Effects of Natura 2000 on nontarget bird and butterfly species based on citizen science data
The European Union's Natura 2000 (N2000) is among the largest international networks of protected areas. One of its aims is to secure the status of a predetermined set of (targeted) bird and butterfly species. However, nontarget species may also benefit from N2000. We evaluated how the terrestrial component of this network affects the abundance of nontargeted, more common bird and butterfly species based on data from long-term volunteer-based monitoring programs in 9602 sites for birds and 2001 sites for butterflies. In almost half of the 155 bird species assessed, and particularly among woodland specialists, abundance increased (slope estimates ranged from 0.101 [SD 0.042] to 3.51 [SD 1.30…
Improving the contribution of citizen-science to monitoring programs requires integrated planning
Monitoring biodiversity is a fundamental tool for its conservation, as it provides information that can guide and eventually improve the effectiveness of management outcomes. Citizen-science is increasingly advocated as a complement to governmental monitoring programs to overcome scarcity of resources and deliver important information for policy-making. In this study, we used the spatial optimization tool Marxan to explore the advantages and limitations of combining government and citizen-science monitoring networks to achieve monitoring targets for bird species of conservation concern for the EU in Catalonia (NE Spain), a region where both schemes are well established. We designed and comp…
Declining populations of European mountain birds
Mountain areas often hold special species communities and are thus in the high priority list of conservation. Changes in human land use, such as grazing pressure and afforestation, and especially in climate have been suggested as major threats for biodiversity in the mountain areas, because species have difficulties to find new suitable habitats in circumstances. Despite the special species communities very little is known about the population trends of species in mountain areas [1,2]. Here we studied population trends of 44 bird species in four major European mountain regions: Fennoscandia, UK upland, south-western (including Pyrenees) and south-central mountains (including Alps), covering…