Coastal urbanization and the integrity of estuarine waterbird communities: Threshold responses and the importance of scale

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dc.contributor.authorDeLuca, William V.
dc.contributor.authorStudds, Colin E.
dc.contributor.authorKing, Ryan S.
dc.contributor.authorMarra, Peter P.
dc.date.accessioned2019-03-11T15:26:24Z
dc.date.available2019-03-11T15:26:24Z
dc.date.issued2008-10-10
dc.description.abstractEstuarine ecosystems are becoming increasingly altered by the concentration of human populations near the coastline, however a robust indicator of this change is lacking. We developed an index of waterbird community integrity (IWCI) and tested its sensitivity to anthropogenic activities within 28 watersheds and associated subestuaries of Chesapeake Bay, USA. The IWCI was used as a tool to gain insight into how human land use affects estuarine ecosystem integrity. Based on Akaike’s information criteria (AIC), a single variable model including percent developed land in estuarine watersheds was thirteen (2002) and twenty-six (2003) times more likely than models including percent agriculture and forest cover to fit the IWCI data. Consequently, we examined how suburban, urban, and total development shaped IWCI scores at three spatial scales: (1) watershed; (2) inverse-distance-weighted (IDW) watershed (land cover near the coastline weighted proportionally greater than that farther away); (3) local (land cover within 500 m of the coastline). Suburban, urban, and total development were all significant predictors of IWCI scores. Relationships were stronger at the IDW and local scales than at the whole watershed scale. Nonparametric changepoint analysis revealed a >80% probability of a threshold in IWCI scores when as little as 3.7% (2002) and 3.5% (2003) of the IDW land cover within the watershed was urban. Our results indicate that, of the landscape stressors we examined, development near estuarine coastlines is the primary stressor to estuarine waterbird community integrity, and that estuarine ecosystem integrity may be impaired by even extremely low levels of coastal urbanization.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipWe deeply appreciate the hard work of Anne Balogh, Suzanne Conrad, Sacha Mkheidze, Dan Mummurt, Ryan Peters, and Beth Wright. We also thank Matthew Baker and Donald Weller for their contributions to the GIS components of this study. This research was funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Estuarine and Great Lakes (EaGLe) program to the Atlantic Slope Consortium, USEPA Agreement #R-82868401. Although the research described in this article has been funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, it has not been subjected to the Agency’s required peer and policy review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.en_US
dc.description.urihttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320708002784en_US
dc.format.extent10 pagesen_US
dc.genrejournal articlesen_US
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/m2ascu-cih4
dc.identifier.citationWilliam V. DeLuca, Colin E. Studds, Ryan S.King and Peter P. Marra, Coastal urbanization and the integrity of estuarine waterbird communities: Threshold responses and the importance of scale, Biological Conservation Volume 141, Issue 11, November 2008, Pages 2669-2678, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.023en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.023
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/13008
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherElsevier B.V.en_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Geography and Environmental Systems Department
dc.rightsThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
dc.rightsPublic Domain Mark 1.0*
dc.rightsThis 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.
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/*
dc.subjectChesapeake Bayen_US
dc.subjectbiological indicatoren_US
dc.subjectchangepointen_US
dc.subjectland coveren_US
dc.subjectwatersheden_US
dc.titleCoastal urbanization and the integrity of estuarine waterbird communities: Threshold responses and the importance of scaleen_US
dc.typeTexten_US

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