Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian Research Council Centre for Environmental Decisions, National Environmental Research Program, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia.
Conserv Biol. 2015 Oct;29(5):1314-26. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12523. Epub 2015 Apr 29.
Conversion of agricultural land to forest plantations is a major driver of global change. Studies on the impact of forest plantations on biodiversity in plantations and in the surrounding native vegetation have been inconclusive. Consequently, it is not known how to best manage the extensive areas of the planet currently covered by plantations. We used a novel, long-term (16 years) and large-scale (30,000 ha) landscape transformation natural experiment (the Nanangroe experiment, Australia) to test the effects of land conversion on population dynamics of 64 bird species associated with woodland and forest. A unique aspect of our study is that we focused on the effects of plantations on birds in habitat patches within plantations. Our study design included 56 treatment sites (Eucalyptus patches where the surrounding matrix was converted from grazed land to pine plantations), 55 control sites (Eucalyptus patches surrounded by grazed land), and 20 matrix sites (sites within the pine plantations and grazed land). Bird populations were studied through point counts, and colonization and extinction patterns were inferred through multiple season occupancy models. Large-scale pine plantation establishment affected the colonization or extinction patterns of 89% of studied species and thus led to a comprehensive turnover in bird communities inhabiting Eucalyptus patches embedded within the maturing plantations. Smaller bodied species appeared to respond positively to plantations (i.e., colonization increased and extirpation of these species decreased in patches surrounded by plantations) because they were able to use the newly created surrounding matrix. We found that the effects of forest plantations affected the majority of the bird community, and we believe these effects could lead to the artificial selection of one group of species at the expense of another.
将农业用地转换为人工林是全球变化的主要驱动因素。关于人工林对人工林和周围原生植被生物多样性的影响的研究尚无定论。因此，目前尚不清楚如何最好地管理地球上目前广泛种植的人工林。我们使用了一种新颖的、长期（16 年）和大规模（3 万公顷）的景观转换自然实验（澳大利亚的 Nanangroe 实验）来测试土地转换对与林地和森林相关的 64 种鸟类种群动态的影响。我们研究的一个独特方面是，我们专注于人工林对人工林中栖息地斑块内鸟类的影响。我们的研究设计包括 56 个处理地点（桉树斑块，周围基质已从放牧地转换为松林）、55 个对照地点（桉树斑块，周围为放牧地）和 20 个基质地点（松林和放牧地内的地点）。通过点计数研究鸟类种群，通过多个季节占有模型推断出繁殖和灭绝模式。大规模的松林建立影响了 89%的研究物种的繁殖或灭绝模式，从而导致了栖息在成熟人工林内桉树斑块中的鸟类群落的全面更替。较小体型的物种似乎对人工林有积极的反应（即，在人工林周围的斑块中繁殖增加，这些物种灭绝减少），因为它们能够利用新创建的周围基质。我们发现，人工林的影响影响了大多数鸟类群落，我们相信这些影响可能导致对一组物种的人为选择，而牺牲另一组物种。
