Use of a landbird monitoring database to explore effects of partial-cut timber harvesting
2002
Young, J.S. | Hutto, R.L.
We used data from the USDA Forest Service Northern Region Landbird Monitoring Program to investigate the effects of partial-cut timber harvesting on bird abundances in conifer forests within the northern Rocky Mountains. We present point-count data from four separate years of the long-term monitoring database, which included between 467 and 907 points, depending on the year. Five bird species were significantly more abundant in uncut forest stands in at least one year, and 17 species were more abundant in partially cut stands in at least one year. Four and eight species from these two groups, respectively, showed the same differences in a short-term, control/treatment comparison conducted in the same region, and no species showed contradictory treatment effects when the two studies were compared. Provided that vegetation data are coupled with bird abundance data, and provided that enough points are visited to compensate for an uncontrolled design, these results suggest that data from long-term monitoring points can be useful not only as sources of information about long-term population trends, but as sources of information about habitat relationships and the effects of land use.
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