Influence of land use on the integrity of marsh bird communities of Chesapeake Bay, USA
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Date
2004-12
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Citation of Original Publication
DeLuca, W.V., Studds, C.E., Rockwood, L.L. et al. Wetlands (2004) 24: 837. https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2004)024[0837:IOLUOT]2.0.CO;2
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This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Abstract
The landscape within the Chesapeake Bay watershed has been and continues to be impacted by
human modifications. Understanding if such anthropogenic disturbances influence organisms that are dependent upon estuarine wetlands remains unclear. We developed an index of marsh bird community integrity
(IMBCI) to evaluate marsh bird communities and wetland condition. During the 2002 and 2003 summers,
we detected 30 bird species at 219 point count locations distributed among 96 wetlands. IMBCI scores for
each wetland were used to determine whether wetland habitat characteristics and urban/suburban development, agriculture, and forest at three different spatial scales (watershed, 1000-m buffer, and 500-m buffer)
influenced marsh bird community integrity. We found no relationship between IMBCI scores and wetland
habitat characteristics, implying that marsh bird community integrity is not related to any single plant community. Nonparametric changepoint analysis indicated that marsh bird community integrity was significantly
reduced when the amount of urban/suburban development within 500 m and 1000 m of the marsh exceeded
14% and 25%, respectively. There was no effect of urban/suburban development on IMBCI scores at the
watershed scale. The results of our study demonstrate that marsh bird community integrity shows a threshold
response to urban/suburban development at local scales. IMBCI scores, combined with the identification of
a land-use threshold, can be easy to interpret and may help communicate complex ecological data to natural
resource managers and conservation planners.