Assessment of Avian Community Structure and Habitat Connectivity in the Fanno Creek Corridor
Start Date
3-11-2024 4:00 PM
Abstract
Urbanization can significantly impact habitat quality and connectivity for bird communities, altering individual behavior and decreasing species richness and diversity. In highly fragmented habitats, urban parks and riparian zones can provide important habitat for birds that facilitate movement and access to essential resources. Fanno Creek is a 24-kilometer waterway in southwest Portland, Oregon, that supports a series of parks and natural areas connected by a greenway trail. This riparian corridor provides a unique opportunity for habitat connectivity in the midst of the highly urbanized surrounding environment, and local agencies have conducted over 20 years of management projects to improve its habitat quality. The objective of this research is to examine the avian community structure along the creek and the extent of habitat connectivity for three bird species representative of distinct habitat needs. The Metro Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Assessment Toolkit provides methodology for efficiently examining habitat connectivity in urban environments by using a combination of GIS analysis and in-person assessments. We are following these methods to quantify habitat quality across thirty-four 90,000 meter² grid cells in the southern reach of the creek. To ground-truth these scores, we conducted 170 point count surveys across the grid cells and will examine the relationship between the habitat connectivity scores and the species counts using a linear regression. This research will serve as a demonstration of the practical application of the Toolkit for urban bird communities in a small-scale study.
Subjects
Animal ecology, GIS / modeling, Habitat assessment, Land/watershed management, Wildlife biology
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41398
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Assessment of Avian Community Structure and Habitat Connectivity in the Fanno Creek Corridor
Urbanization can significantly impact habitat quality and connectivity for bird communities, altering individual behavior and decreasing species richness and diversity. In highly fragmented habitats, urban parks and riparian zones can provide important habitat for birds that facilitate movement and access to essential resources. Fanno Creek is a 24-kilometer waterway in southwest Portland, Oregon, that supports a series of parks and natural areas connected by a greenway trail. This riparian corridor provides a unique opportunity for habitat connectivity in the midst of the highly urbanized surrounding environment, and local agencies have conducted over 20 years of management projects to improve its habitat quality. The objective of this research is to examine the avian community structure along the creek and the extent of habitat connectivity for three bird species representative of distinct habitat needs. The Metro Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Assessment Toolkit provides methodology for efficiently examining habitat connectivity in urban environments by using a combination of GIS analysis and in-person assessments. We are following these methods to quantify habitat quality across thirty-four 90,000 meter² grid cells in the southern reach of the creek. To ground-truth these scores, we conducted 170 point count surveys across the grid cells and will examine the relationship between the habitat connectivity scores and the species counts using a linear regression. This research will serve as a demonstration of the practical application of the Toolkit for urban bird communities in a small-scale study.