Land Condition Trend Analysis Avian Database: Ecological Guild-based Summaries

摘要

Land Condition Trend Analysis (LCTA) bird database documentation capabilities often are limited to the generation of installation-wide species checklists, estimates of relative abundance, and evidence of breeding activity. The conservation and characterization of biological diversity is becoming a management objective of both governmental and private organizations, and as such, more ecologically descriptive summaries are being required. Ecological guild analyses have been proposed as a means to link wildlife to a specific biodiversity component, and thus represents an option to military trainers in evaluating impacts to wildlife communities. This report documents an LCTA database update that provides selected ecological attributes (particularly for the nesting season) for 676 bird species occurring within the continental United States. This database upgrade provides land managers the capability to: (1) generate ecological guild-based summaries with no additional fieldwork, (2) identify specific groups of birds most likely to be impacted by a spatially discrete training impact, (3) customize the local database by adjusting individual attributes for species specific to the installation, and (4) conveniently cross reference or simply convert all LCTA species codes to more globally recognized American Ornithological Union 'AOU numbers' or the Bird Banding Laboratories 'Alpha codes.'