Linking avian diversity with farms in the Iowa Corn Belt using remote sensing, collaborative passive acoustic monitoring, and farmer-habitat relationships
Loading...
Links to Files
Permanent Link
Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2020-01-01
Type of Work
Department
Geography and Environmental Systems
Program
Geography and Environmental Systems
Citation of Original Publication
Rights
Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan through a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Abstract
Addressing the decline of farmland birds throughout North America requires strategies that can inform and complement land use decisions made by farmers. Reconciliation of agricultural land use with wildlife conservation cannot be addressed without combining social and ecological knowledge, potentially through methods supported by recent theoretical and technological advancements. This dissertations addresses the methodological challenges of systematic avian biodiversity monitoring across an agricultural region by combining high-resolution remote sensing of farmland habitats with low-cost passive acoustic monitoring. Integrating ecological measures of species and habitat with social measures of habitat management creates further challenges if researchers, land managers, and policy makers are to make decisions based on these observations. Strategies to address these challenges are investigated through a social-theory-driven empirical approach examining how farmer identity verification processes influence farmland habitat management. Newforms of high-resolution habitat mapping integrated with new sensors capable of detecting avian diversity within intensive row-crop agricultural farmland show great promise for providing reliable, low-cost, and accurate ecological information. Linking these ecological measurements with farmer's social rationales describing where and how habitats are created within farmland could help to establish farmer-habitat- wildlife relationships in support of conservation efforts in farmlands. Multiple research challenges remain before these new technologies and social theories can be integrated to support multifunctional farm management strategies that support both conservation and production. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and microsatellite constellations have unique cost and methodological trade-offs for habitat mapping in farmland. Passive acoustic monitoring can complement remote sensing platforms by providing measures of avian diversity, but it is unclear how robust these acoustically derived measures are, and to what degree these can be linked with remotely sensed habitat measures. Additionally, great potential exists to collaborate with farmers and landowners in the acoustic data collection process, which can bring down costs and increase observational capacity while also bringing ecological information closer to decision makers. In the conclusion chapter, recommendations are presented for strategies that can enhance the scale, power, and integration of social and ecological measurements in support of biodiversity conservation across the Iowa Corn Belt.