Winter thriving: On the role of a boreal city on bird communities

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Abstract

Information on how urban areas affect bird communities during winter in the boreal region is still scarce. With the aim of assessing such role of the urban habitats on over-wintering boreal birds, I focused on a city-wide approach in the city of Lahti (southern Finland) and two nearby forests (as controls). Point count surveys were conducted in 157 sites within the city and 30 in the control forests. In order to achieve comparable sets of data to contrast with the reference forests, I randomly selected five 30 point count sub-samples from the Lahti city-wide survey. Species richness was, in general, higher in the sub-samples from the city of Lahti. Such pattern did not show relationship with the built cover of the studied sites. Bird abundances were 3.3-5.9 times higher in the urban sub-samples when contrasted with the forest ones. Although results of this study are limited to a single city and consider one wintering season, they clearly illustrate the important role of urban systems as habitat for wintering birds in boreal systems.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberjuac010
JournalJournal of urban Ecology
Volume8
Issue number1
Number of pages7
ISSN2058-5543
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press.

Fields of Science

  • avian ecology
  • Finland
  • Lahti
  • urban ecology
  • urban-forest contrast
  • wintering birds
  • 1181 Ecology, evolutionary biology

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