Heavy snowfall down mountain slopes clears dense forests, making way for shrubs and small trees, allowing more diverse bird species to populate affected areas.
life
February 14, 2023
Bunting prefers open habitats created after avalanches have cleared dense forests Riccardo Alba (University of Turin, Turin, Italy)
Avalanches create an attractive living environment for many bird species, increasing bird diversity in mountainous areas where powerful snow streams have knocked down large trees.
Sudden, large-scale changes in snow regularly clear out parts of the dense, high-canopy forests, which are primarily populated by great tits, thrushes, and woodpeckers, and shrubs and small trees that are appealing to winchat, pipit, and bunting. Make way for growth. As climate change affects future avalanche activity, these landscape ‘mosaics’ could become habitats for a wide variety of bird species, says Riccardo of the University of Turin, Italy. Alba said.
“I didn’t realize there was so much diversity,” he says. “Continuing to study the interactions between climate change and biodiversity in mountain environments to better understand how these ecosystems are changing and how to protect them for future generations. is important.”
Avalanches can pose a serious danger to humans. It also plays an important role in mountain ecosystems. But the impact on biodiversity is surprisingly understudied, Alba says.
To better understand the impact on bird assemblages, Alba and his colleagues surveyed 240 sites in the Western Italian Alps near Turin during the spring 2021 bird breeding season. Half of these points are from previous surveys or historical data – some decades ago, others within the last few years.
The data revealed that habitats in areas affected by avalanches were more diverse, with more rocks, small trees, grasses, and relatively short vegetation compared to areas not affected. The difference was most pronounced in the lowlands, where tall trees such as beech, ash, and maple dominated, compared to the highlands, where larch and shrubs such as juniper and alpenrose were more common. was most prominent, Alba says.
As a result, researchers found more species of birds in avalanche tracks, with 62 species identified in previous avalanche areas and only 55 in unaffected areas, he says.
Birds seen in avalanche-free jungles included spotted woodpeckers (Dendrocopos major), song (philomelo thrush) and Eurasian ivy (celsia family), he says.
In contrast, avalanche-hit areas had a high proportion of high-altitude forest-line species, in addition to migratory birds and birds that normally nest in open habitats. These included black grouse (Liralus Tetrix), the tree pit (Anthus trivialis), general Linnet (cannabis linaria), bunting (emberizacia), Winchatz (Saxicola rubetra), Yellow Hammer (emberiza citrinella) and black redstarts (Phoenix oculus).
The composition of different species will further depend on how recently and how often avalanches have occurred in a particular area, Alba says.
Researchers are still debating whether global warming will make avalanches more or less frequent, but he adds that disruptions to natural rhythms could have significant effects on bird diversity. .
“Each of these changes will affect mountain biodiversity on a broader scale, so it is important that we continue to study it,” he says.
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