The importance of multi-scale analyses in avian habitat selection studies in urban environments

Abstract

We have a limited understanding of how birds respond to different scales of urban landscape structure. Such information is important to concerned homeowners, developers, and city planners because each need to know whether the scale at which they manipulate the landscape will appreciably reduce or attract certain avian species. Often in urban habitat selection studies, one arbitrary scale is chosen to correlate habitat structure to avian abundance, composition, and/or distribution. This scale mayor may not reflect the primary scale at which species respond to landscape structure. In this paper, I (I) give a hierarchical perspective on how birds may select habitat from limited to broad scales, (2) describe a multi-scale analysis to determine the broad scales at which birds respond to landscape structure, and (3) discuss why multi-scale studies will ultimately help urban wildlife managers evaluate the scales at which a landscape design is most effective at attracting various species. A connection exists between the scales at which birds respond to landscape structure and the scales at which humans impact urban areas.