Farmland birds on AES/control farms 2003-2015 ... : Population Responses of Five Farmland Bird Species to 12 Years of Agri-environment Schemes in Northeastern Scotland ...

• Main Author: Perkins, Allan
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2018
• Subjects: agriculture; conservation; passerine; low-intensity farmland; spatial statistics; offset; multi-membership; Biological SciencesEcology; Alauda arvensis
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/2275; https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/2984

1. The decline of farmland birds across Europe is an especially well-documented case of biodiversity loss, and despite land stewardship supported by funding from agri-environment schemes (AES), the negative trends have not yet been reversed. 2. To investigate the effect of AES towards farmland bird conservation, we compared abundance of five farmland bird species across twelve years and 53 farms (158 farm years = AES, 72 farm years = non AES) in Northeastern Scotland (UK), a region with relatively low intensity mixed farmland. 3. Between 2003 and 2015, on both AES and control farms, skylark (Alauda arvensis) declined in abundance, whereas tree sparrow (Passer montanus) and yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) abundance increased, and reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) and linnet (Carduelis cannabina) populations remained relatively stable. 4. We did not detect a significant association between AES and avian abundance or population trends for any of these species, but there were positive associations with some ... : The dataset contains three csv files - birds_aes.csv, birds_lmo.csv and spatial.csv. * "bird_aes.csv" contains abundance records for five species on AES (agri-environment scheme) and control farms during 2003-2015. * "birds_lmo.csv" contains abundance records for five species on AES farms and the presence/absence of specific land management options associated with each farm. * "spatial.csv" contains abundance records for five species on AES and control farms during 2003-2015 and the spatial location of each farm. Please see readme.txt for full description of each column in the three csv files. ...