INVESTIGADORES
ISLA Federico Ignacio
artículos
Título:
Predicting the seasonal dynamics of bird communities along an urban-rural gradient using NDVI
Autor/es:
LEVEAU LUCAS; ISLA, F.; BELLOCQ ISABEL
Revista:
LANDSCAPE AND URBAN PLANNING
Editorial:
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Referencias:
Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2018 vol. 177 p. 103 - 113
ISSN:
0169-2046
Resumen:
The normalized di ff erence vegetation index (NDVI) is a strong and widely used proxy for bird species richness inurban environments. However, its potential to predict composition and seasonal dynamics of bird communitiesin urban areas remains unexplored. Our main objective was to analyze the power of NDVI to predict the seasonaldynamics of bird communities along urbanization gradients. Birds were surveyed in the breeding and non-breeding seasons. Bird species richness was estimated using COMDYN, and bird community composition wassummarized in two axes using Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS). For each of the breeding and non-breeding seasons, bird richness and the NMDS axis scores were related to both the mean NDVI of the season andthe annual seasonal variation of NDVI (mean NDVI of the breeding season ? mean NDVI of the non-breedingseasons). Results showed that NDVI decreased towards the most urbanized areas, with the highest seasonalvariation occurring in agricultural areas. Single-family houses surrounded by yards held a high NDVI in bothseasons and the lowest seasonal variation. Bird richness increased at intermediate levels of NDVI and was ne-gatively related to the seasonal variations of the NDVI. Seasonal variation in bird community composition in-creased with annual mean and seasonal variation of the NDVI predicting higher seasonal stability of assemblagecomposition in urban than in non-urban areas. The results suggest that urbanization alters ecosystem functioningby reducing seasonal dynamics and the amount of primary productivity, which in turn promotes seasonalhomogenization of urban avifauna relative to non-urban areas.