Preservation of historical heritage increases bird biodiversity in urban centers
- PDF / 2,625,586 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 102 Downloads / 245 Views
Preservation of historical heritage increases bird biodiversity in urban centers Tulaci Bhakti1 · Fernanda Rossi1 · Pedro de Oliveira Mafia1 · Eduardo Franco de Almeida1 · Maria Augusta Gonçalves Fujaco2 · Cristiano Schetini de Azevedo1 Received: 16 April 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Urban expansion negatively influences biodiversity by eliminating habitats and homogenizing the biotic component, to which many species are unable to respond. However, historical cities, with their protected heritage sites, maintain many fragments of vegetation (gardens, squares, etc.). Such fragments permit the existence of biodiversity, especially of birds, because they provide areas for shelter and food and function as stepping stones that increases the permeability of the urban matrix. We hypothesized that the presence of green areas, such as gardens and parks, would favor greater richness and abundance of bird species, especially omnivores and granivores, during the dry season and in the Historic Center of the city of Ouro Preto. Birds were sampled by point counts at 35 points distributed throughout the urban matrix of Ouro Preto, where richness and abundance were recorded and correlated with land use. Both the presence of green areas and the maintenance of the Historic Center influenced the bird community present in the urban center, with higher richness in areas with more shrubs and trees and closer to larger forested fragments. Bird abundance was greater in the Historic Center and during the rainy season. These findings demonstrate that maintaining heritage sites in urban centers can mitigate the expected negative impacts of urbanization by allowing small patches of vegetation to serve as favorable habitats for bird species. Keywords Avifauna · Abundance · Conservation · Historical center · Richness · Urbanization
1 Introduction Urbanization transforms both the physical and biotic structures of a given habitat and can interfere with various ecological processes that involve local fauna and flora (Mendonça and Anjos 2005). Such modifications result in a landscape composed of a mosaic of environments, with floristic composition and structure usually different from those originally * Cristiano Schetini de Azevedo [email protected]; [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
T. Bhakti et al.
present (Grimm et al. 2008; Patra et al. 2018). These mosaics are diffuse with patches of native vegetation interspersed by areas with different levels of human occupation (Marzluff et al. 2001; Yi et al. 2016). Biodiversity can be directly or indirectly affected by urbanization (McDonald et al. 2019; Turrini et al. 2016). Direct effects are observed when a natural area is replaced by an urban area with the construction of buildings, houses, or other human modifications (Pejchar et al. 2015). All the changes that occur to biotic and abiotic conditions in a newly urbanized environment, such as mo
Data Loading...
