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Bird-vegetation associations in thinned and unthinned young Douglas-fir forests 10 years after thinning

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Title Bird-vegetation associations in thinned and unthinned young Douglas-fir forests 10 years after thinning
Names Yegorova, Svetlana (creator)
Betts, Matthew G. (creator)
Hagar, Joan (creator)
Puettmann, Klaus J. (creator)
Date Issued 2013-12-15 (iso8601)
Note To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/forest-ecology-and-management/.
Abstract Quantitative associations between animals and vegetation have long been used as a basis for conservation
and management, as well as in formulating predictions about the influence of resource management
and climate change on populations. A fundamental assumption embedded in the use of such correlations
is that they remain relatively consistent over time. However, this assumption of stationarity has been
rarely tested – even for forest birds, which are frequently considered to be ‘indicator species’ in management
operations. We investigated the temporal dynamics of bird-vegetation relationships in young
Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forests over more than a decade following initial anthropogenic disturbance
(commercial thinning). We modeled bird occurrence or abundance as a function of vegetation
characteristics for eight common bird species for each of six breeding seasons following forest thinning.
Generally, vegetation relationships were highly inconsistent in magnitude across years, but remained
positive or negative within species. For 3 species, relationships that were initially strong dampened over
time. For other species, strength of vegetation association was apparently stochastic. These findings indicate
that caution should be used when interpreting weak bird-vegetation relationships found in short-term
studies and parameterizing predictive models with data collected over the short term.
Genre Article
Topic Bird-vegetation associations
Identifier Yegorova, S., Betts, M. G., Hagar, J., & Puettmann, K. J. (2013). Bird-vegetation associations in thinned and unthinned young Douglas-fir forests 10 years after thinning. Forest Ecology and Management, 310, 1057-1070. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2013.06.052

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