Transcript A Canary for Urban Ecosystems - Binghamton Neighborhood Project

Binghamton Birds
A Canary for Urban Ecosystems
Anne Clark, Julian Shepherd, Richard Andrus, Mark Blumler, John Scott and Ben Eisenkop
Why Birds?
Studying Birds in Binghamton
• Natural communities of plants, animals and other organisms
contribute to the health of a city—cleaner air, insect control,
interrupt disease transmission, relieve human stress and
contribute to aesthetic appreciation.
• Birds are key community members and good indicators of
community diversity. They are also among the most easily
assessed—by scientists and bird-watchers alike.
Binghamton’s Urban Ecosystem Initiative will monitor our bird
populations in order to understand how greenspaces (parks,
river, cemeteries) linked by trees along streets and private
backyards all contribute to supporting our birds. What makes a
valuable yard, park or street? How will we know?
• Assess number of birds and number of bird species along
routes that cut across many different levels of city
development.
• Census birds in our official greenspaces—parks, cemeteries,
riverine areas.
• Promote everyone mapping his or her backyard habitat with
YardMap—a new citizen science project from the Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology.
• With citizen collaboration, create a Bird Map for
Binghamton, relating bird presence to plants, human activity
and other features.
• Locate and count birds in “roosts”, large aggregations seen
mostly in winter.
Birds Are More Diverse with Fewer
Non-Native Species in More Natural Habitats
Preliminary findings from our
first project assessing birds and
trees across an “urban gradient.”
Blue line =
Route
How can you participate?
Total Number of Bird Species Increases
with the Number of Trees Over 30ft High
The BUEI will depend on help from Binghamton’s
residents. Our bird studies can use your help with all the above
projects, no matter what your age!
Number and kind of
birds differ dramatically
with neighborhood
vegetation.
Total Number of Bird Species
12
10
8
6
• Map your yard!
• Count birds at your feeders.
• Interested in birds? Help us run censuses at any time.
R² = 0.5532
4
2
0
0
20
40
60
Number of trees > 30ft High
80
100
Contact us! Anne B. Clark [email protected], Julian Shepherd
[email protected], Dick Andrus [email protected]