The maps were created by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at a high enough resolution to allow conservation managers to focus their efforts in the most likely areas to help birds. They can be found in specific counties or forests and not across entire states or regions. The study was published by Ecological Applications.
The maps are based on the US contiguous and predicted the bird diversity in the area. This was related to traits such as nesting or endangered. These predictions were based on detailed observations of birds as well as environmental factors that influence bird ranges such the temperature and forest cover.
“With these maps managers have a tool that they don’t have before that allows for them to get both an overview and the information necessary to make their action plans,” Anna Pidgeon, UW-Madison professor of forest ecology, who led the development of the maps. “We are witnessing huge species losses all over the globe. Since 1970, North America has seen 3 billion bird deaths. This applies to virtually all habitat types,” stated Kathaleen Carrick.
“And we are seeing a disconnect in what scientists produce to conserve and how that translates into boots on the ground management,” she said. Many resources previously available for conservation managers, such species range maps are too broad to be useful and not rigorously checked for accuracy.
Carroll and her team set out to create data-driven maps of bird biodiversity in order to overcome these challenges. The maps were created by extrapolating observations from scientific surveys to make mile-by-mile predictions about where different species actually live. They used factors like rainfall, forest cover, and the extent of human impact on the environment such as the presence or absence of cities.
Scientists clustered species by their behaviour, habitat, diet, conservation status or other factors to improve the predictive power of their maps. For example, fruit eaters and forest dwellers. These groups are known as guilds. Many conservation decisions are made at guild level, instead of at the species level. Additionally, guilds can help with limited information regarding the most endangered species.
The final maps included 19 different guilds at resolutions between 0.5, 2.5 and five kilometres. While the finest-grained maps were not as accurate, the 2.5-kilometre-resolution maps provided a good balance of accuracy and usefulness for realistic conservation needs, said scientists. The maps have a 5-kilometre resolution which provides the best accuracy and is useful for conservationists working across large areas.
Carroll stated that “we see this being really useful for things like forest management actions plans for the U.S. Forest Service.” She said that they could pull up maps for a group and get a clear indication of areas where they might want human use to be limited.
Private land conservancies might also be able to use the maps to determine where to allocate limited resources to maximize biodiversity protections. (ANI)
(This story is not edited by Devdiscourse staff.