New article: Monitoring variability in post-fire bird colonisation in Mediterranean landscapes (DINDIS database)

In a new article lead by Elena Lopez-Zozaya and published in the EBCC Cáceres conference special number of the journal Ardeola, the DINDIS bird monitoring data base is officially presented.

The DINDIS database results from the monitoring of bird communities occupying all areas affected by large wildfires in Catalonia since 2000. We used bird surveys conducted from 2006 to 2009 and performed a principal components analysis to describe two main gradients of variation in the composition of bird communities, which were used as descriptors of bird communities in subsequent analyses.

We then analysed the relationships of these community descriptors with bioclimatic regions within Catalonia, time since fire and pre-fire vegetation (forest or shrubland). We have conducted 1,918 bird surveys in 567 transects distributed in 56 burnt areas. Eight out of the twenty most common detected species have an unfavourable conservation status, most of them being associated to open-habitats. Both bird communities’ descriptors had a strong regional component and were related to pre-fire vegetation, and to a lesser extent to the time since fire.

We came to the conclusion that the responses of bird communi- ties to wildfires are heterogeneous, complex and context dependent. Large-scale monitoring datasets, such as DINDIS, might allow identifying factors acting at different spatial and temporal scales that affect the dynamics of species and communities, giving additional information on the causes under general trends observed using other monitoring systems. 

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Presentem la base de dades sobre patrons de distribució d’ocells en zones cremades DINDIS.

En aquest article de la nostra companya Elena Lopez-Zozaya, i publicat en el número especial de la revista Ardeola derivat de la darrera conferència del EBCC a la ciutat de Cáceres, es presenta la metodologia emprada i uns primers resultats.

Aquest programa de monitoreig encetat l’any 2006 mostreja tots els incendis majors de 50 ha ocorreguts a Catalunya des de l’any 2000 utilitzant metodologies estàndards utilitzades en altres programes de monitoreig d’ocells a grans escales espacials.

Zozaya, E.L.,Brotons, L., Herrando, S., Pons, P., Rost, J. & Clavero, M. 2010. Monitoring spatial and temporal dynamics of bird communties in Meditarranean landscapes affected by large wildfies. Ardeola 57(Especial), 2010, 33-50.