Ecology and Conservation of Birds in Urban Environments

Enrique MurguiAfter he graduated as biologist in 1992 Enrique has been involved in every sort of ornithological projects from censusing bird fauna in uplands to collaborate in several NGOs, and giving professional assistance to different firms.  In 2006 he received his PhD dealing with the influence of urban landscape structure on bird fauna. Since then he has been involved in a long-term research on how urbanization affect bird fauna across time, and in other research and professional projects ranging from an investigation on peri-urban farmland bird communities to monitoring bird fauna in windfarms. Marcus HedblomMarcus received his PhD in 2007 concerning birds and butterflies in urban and peri-urban habitats. He has since then worked as a nature conservation strategist in the fourth largest city in Sweden (Uppsala), made a post-doc at Gothenburg University and worked as a project leader at the national monitoring program for biodiversity (NILS) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).  He is presently involved in numerous transdisciplinary research projects concerning urban ecosystem services and leader of a research group studying human stress reduction from natural sounds in cities at SLU. Marcus is an associate editor of the Journal Urban Ecosystems and founder of the Swedish Think tank Green City.

• Preface.- Introduction (Murgui, E. & Hedblom, M.).- Section 1: GENERAL PATTERNS AND PROCESSES.- Global patterns and drivers of urban birds (Aronson, M. et al.).- Birds and urbanization: Spatial and temporal patterns emerging from the southern Neotropics (Bellocq, I.).- The role of landscape scale factors in shaping the composition of urban birds communities (Litteral, J. & Shochat, E.).- Non-indigenous birds and urbanized environments (Sol, D.).- Mechanisms of behavioural changes in urban animals: the role of evolution and plasticity (Miranda, A.C.).- Section 2: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES.- Ornithological atlases of towns and cities in Europe (Luniak, M.).- Counting birds in urban areas (van Heezik, Y. & Seddon, P.).- Long-Term Urban Avian Research (Ficino, M. & Magle, S.).- Section 3: URBAN BIRD HABITATS MANAGEMENT.- Management of urban nature and its impact on bird fauna (Heyman, E. & Gunnarsson, B.).- Green infrastructure in urban areas: how does it affect bird populations? (Chiquet, C.).- Social and ecological factors determining the diversity of birds in residential landscapes (Goddard, M. & Leman, S.).- Facilitating Feathered Friends – Improving Avifauna Promotion in Post-construction Urban Planning Procedures (Daniels, G.).- The role of invasive plant species in urban avian conservation (Gleditsch, J.).- Birds and wastelands (Meffert, P.).- Section 4: ANTHROPOGENIC FACTORS.- Pollutants in urbanized areas – direct and indirect effects on bird populations (Kekkonen, J.).- Going wild: Using light-loggers to investigate the effects of light pollution on wild animals (Dominoni, D.).- Bird diversity – panacea for human well-being in cities? (Hedblom, M. & Gunnarsson, B.).- Becoming citizens: avian adaptations to urban life (Macias, C., Suarez, M. & López, I.).- Section 5: URBAN BIRD CONSERVATION.- How to use monitoring data for conservation (Louwe, J.).- Indicators of the effects of the urban green infrastructure on birds (Herrando, S.).- Richness and species of conservation concern in parks of Italian towns (Sorace, A. & Gustin, M.).- Concluding remarks (Hedblom, M. & Murgui, E.).

“This book is an excellent summarization of the research … . This book is both well written and scholarly. It offers a lucid account on urban birds and it will be handy for researchers.” (S.Suresh Ramanan and Lalit Upadhyay, Journal of Threatened Taxa, Vol. 11 (5), 2019)“This book is a wonderful addition to the current urban bird conservation literature. … this collection of research is valuable both as an overview of avian ecology in an urban setting and as vehicle to present specific research that is of value for future conservation and management efforts. Its global application is to be applauded—the diversity of ecosystems and management methods presented make it a useful review of this topic.” (Carol A. Pollio, The Quarterly Reviewof Biology, Vol. 93 (1), March, 2018)“The text comprises thought-provoking parts that introduce the theme that birds in cities are important ecological entities, address the influence of urbanization and adaptation on populations, offer aspects of research and methodology, discuss anthropogenic factors … and provide case studies pertaining to urban habitats. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.” (M. Gochfeld, Choice, Vol. 55 (1), September, 2017) “This new publication provides a timely review of the vast amount of work to have been done within the last two decades, something that should stimulate and direct future research efforts. ... this is an important publication and one which brings to the fore a wide range of research from a broader suite of countries than seen before. … The editors and contributors are to be congratulated.” (Mike Toms, Bird Study, April, 2017)