| | Accession Number | 5004075 |
| | Title | Impact of placement of bottomland hardwood forest restoration on avian demography. |
| | Project Description | Extensive areas of bottomland hardwood forest are being restored on marginal agricultural lands in |
| | the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. In addition to restoration undertaken on public lands, programs |
| | such as the U.S. Department of AgricultureÆs Wetland Reserve Program have markedly |
| | increased reforestation on private lands. Further increases in the area of hardwood forest are |
| | possible through these programs, but additional opportunities exist in conjunction with possible |
| | credits for carbon sequestration and increasing areas of short-rotation hardwood forestry for |
| | pulpwood or biofuel production. Concerns have been voiced regarding the appropriate landscape |
| | context within which to restore these forests. Specifically, what are the environmental benefits of |
| | reforesting isolated tracts versus the benefits accrued through reforestation adjoining extant forest. |
| | Often questioned is the assumption that isolated tracts function as ôsink habitatsö where |
| | reproductive output does not compensate for adult mortality. This excess mortality must be |
| | compensated through immigration of individuals from ôsourceö populations. Forest-core habitat is |
| | generally assumed to provide this excess productivity. A further assumption is that creation of |
| | ôsoft-edges,ö through reforestation adjacent to existing forests, mitigates the detrimental impacts |
| | associated with forest-agriculture interfaces and thereby increases the amount of forest core. |
| | Studies have examined avian demographics along forest edges but little effort has been made to |
| | assess the performance of conservation strategies that are designed to negate detrimental |
| | ecological processes associated with habitat fragmentation. |
| | Keywords | acadian flycatcher, afforestation, avian abundance, bottomland hardwood, demography, |
| | dickcissel, eastern towhee, edge, forest, landscape, mississippi valley, mourning dove, nest |
| | monitoring, nest parasitism, nest predation, nest success, northern cardinal, passerine, |
| | red-winged blackbird, reforestation, wetland reserve program, white-eyed vireo, yellow-billed |
| | cuckoo, yellow-breasted chat, |
| | Principal | Daniel J Twedt, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: dan_twedt@usgs.gov; Robert J |
| | Investigators | Cooper, Warnell School of Forest Resources, University of Georgia: |
| | rcooper@smokey.forestry.uga.edu; |
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