Cultural ecosystem services (non-material benefits from nature) contribute to nature-based economies and many, such as bird watching or wildlife viewing, depend directly on biotic communities. Seasonal changes in biotic communities as species shift to track habitat or resources can affect the supply of cultural ecosystem services across a landscape. Bird communities differ in community composition, richness, and abundance in relation to land cover, urbanization, habitat structure and resources. Despite these known variations, ecosystem service models of bird-watching capacity are largely static, relying on single estimates of species richness or simple land-use/land-cover proxies, and are insufficient for identifying seasonal dynamics of ecosystem services across a landscape. We analyzed landscape dynamics of bird communities across a rural-to-urban gradient in a temperate montane landscape, developed spatially explicit estimates of bird watching capacity, and asked: (1) To what degree do bird communities vary seasonally, from early spring to summer, and what factors explain this variation? (2) How do bird community shifts affect projected bird watching capacity over space and time? Data were collected using repeated point-counts at 69 sites in the Southern Appalachian Mountains (USA) from April – August 2014.
Results/Conclusions
A total of 96 bird species were recorded, of which 16 were recorded only during the spring (April – June) and 2 only during summer (June – August). The relative abundance of resident species varied through the season, but was highest at sites with greater surrounding building density. Species richness declined over time (F=3.09, p=0.04, df=5) and was highest at intermediate levels of development during all time periods. Spatial turnover increased over time and was greatest during the summer. Spatial turnover in bird communities was strongly related to surrounding building density and habitat structure (i.e., tree and shrub cover), but environmental variables explaining spatial turnover in bird communities shifted through the season. Seasonal turnover in bird communities was greatest at forested sites and negatively related to the surrounding building density. Changes in bird communities across the landscape led to shifting spatial patterns of bird watching capacity and identified seasonally complex relationships between cultural ecosystem service capacity and environmental variables. Incorporating dynamics of biotic communities highlights temporal dynamics of cultural ecosystem services and can support ecosystem service management efforts.