The Influence of Transport Infrastructure Development on Bird Diversity and Abundance

Abstract

In recent decades, detrimental effects of roads have been the focus of numerous studies. Roadways have various negative effects, such as habitat fragmentation, noise and air pollution, on bird communities. This study was aimed to investigate the effects of traffic noise on the bird's abundance during autumn period. Field operations were performed in a forest located parallel to a main high-traffic highway. The bird's abundance was recorded using a point counting method at 27 points along three transects (65, 335 and 605 m from the road). The counting at each point was conducted every five minutes and repeated once every week (12 times during autumn). Environmental indices including the number of trees with DBH of over 20 cm, the number of standing dead trees, canopy cover percentage and Leq 30 were also measured. A total of 2950 bird belonging to 30 species were observed. The number of dominant species (more than 10) in the area considerably changed as the distance from the road increased. Leq 30 had the greatest correlation coefficient with bird abundance. Therefore, traffic noise has negative effects on the bird's abundance in this area.