Diversity of birds in relation to land use and climate

We are especially interested in how the management of land affect bird diversity and whether instruments, such as EU subsidies, aimed at mitigating negative effects of land-use on biodiversity, are successful. Our aims are to both understand the mechanisms and factors governing bird biodiversity in the managed landscape and to use this knowledge to build predictive models for the relation between management actions and changes to the bird fauna.

The ultimate goal is to provide tools for evaluating alternative actions proposed by decision makers such that they can base their decisions on sound scientific grounds.

Our research covers a spectrum from studies on bird communities at regional and national scales down to detailed studies on individual species and populations. We collect data on bird populations from own specifically designed bird surveys but also collaborate with the Swedish Bird Survey using their yearly updated bird surveys with extensive national coverage. On the land-use side we have built up a GIS infrastructure in which the Integrative Administration and Control System (IACS) database from the Swedish Board of Agriculture and various resources from The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority (Lantmäteriet) are used to extract spatially explicit land-use, habitat and subsidy information associated with the area surrounding our study sites.

• The Swedish Bird Survey – fageltaxering.lu.se
• Swedish Board of Agriculture – jordbruksverket.se 
• The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority (Lantmäteriet) – lantmateriet.se

Within this subject, research is currently carried out in the following projects:

• Predicting effects of the common agricultural policy on farmland birds
• Conservation of the grey partridge
• Birds and climate change

Previous research done within this subject has resulted in the following dissertations and reports:

• Maria von Post, PhD thesis 
  Effects of farmland heterogeneity at multiple spatial and temporal scales on house sparrow – lup.lub.lu.se
• Juliana Dänhardt, PhD thesis 
  On the importance of farmland as stopover habitat for migrating birds – lup.lub.lu.se
• Martin Granbom, PhD thesis 
  Growth conditions and individual quality in starlings – lup.lub.lu.se
• Måns Bruun, PhD thesis 
  On starlings and farming: population decline, foraging strategies, cost of reproduction and breeding success – lup.lub.lu.se
• Åke Lindström et al. 
  Birds in the agricultural landscape – jordbruksverket.se 
  (Report commissioned by the Swedish board of Agriculture)