Anthropogenic impacts on the demographics of Arctic-breeding birds
- PDF / 1,281,646 Bytes
- 43 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 200 Views
REVIEW
Anthropogenic impacts on the demographics of Arctic‑breeding birds Susan Doyle1 · Aimée Gray1 · Barry J. McMahon1 Received: 2 March 2020 / Revised: 17 September 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The Arctic supports a diversity of breeding birds. Since the mid-twentieth century, anthropogenic-source climate change, industrial activity and harvest have impacted this ecosystem and the demographics of its breeding birds, highlighting the need to synthesise current knowledge. A scoping review was conducted to quantify recent population trends and identify impacts of anthropogenic activity on species’ demography. The literature revealed that many seabird trends were mixed or uncertain. Trends among waterfowl, divers and cranes were largely upward or stable. Trends among waders, passerines and raptors, however, were more evenly distributed upward and downward. Wader trends tended to be more positive in the East Atlantic flyway compared to other flyways, while many raptor populations are recovering following historic losses. In contrast, grouse experienced uncertain or negative trends. Weather regime and vegetation shifts, phenological mismatches and diminishing sea ice associated with climate change are important drivers of demography. The strength and direction of these impacts, however, varies among guilds and between the low and high-Arctic. The extraction, chemical, agriculture and fisheries industries also impact demography. Research on heavy metal and organochlorine contamination was prevalent in the literature, despite having relatively weaker impacts than other drivers. Although bird harvest has had profound impacts on Arctic populations, recently updated regulations and improvements in policy have ameliorated its impact somewhat. Nonetheless, many anthropogenic impacts are predicted to become more severe in the future, with consequences for breeding bird trends, therefore continued pan-Arctic monitoring and addressing knowledge gaps will be necessary to preserve this unique biome. Keywords Agriculture · Climate change · Diminishing sea ice · Phenological mismatch · Resource exploitation
Introduction The Arctic supports 199 species of breeding bird, amounting to approximately 2% of global avian species richness (Ganter and Gaston 2013). Because of its remoteness, the impact of anthropogenic activity on Arctic-breeding birds is often assumed to be minimal. However, widespread environmental change is occurring in the Arctic, much of which is attributed to anthropogenic-source climate change, industrial activity and harvest. Climate warming driven by industrial emissions (including agriculture) since the 1950s has altered Arctic Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02756-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Barry J. McMahon [email protected] 1
UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin,
Data Loading...
