Abstract
Land cover and use changes are important to study for their impact on ecosystem services and ultimately on sustainability. In urban environments, a particularly important research question addresses the relationship between urbanization-related changes and biodiversity, subject to controversies in the literature. Birds are an important ecological group, and useful for answering this question. The present study builds upon the hypothesis according to which avian diversity decreases with urbanization. In order to answer it, a sample of 4245 observations from 650 sites in Annaba, Algeria, obtained through the point abundance index method, were investigated by computing Shannon-Wiener’s diversity index and the species richness, mapping them, and analyzing the results statistically. The findings confirm the study hypothesis and are relevant for planning, as they stress the role of urban green spaces as biodiversity hotspots, and plead for the need of connecting them. From a planning perspective, the results emphasize the need for interconnecting the green infrastructure through avian corridors. Moreover, the results fill in an important lack of data on the biodiversity of the region, and are relevant for other similar Mediterranean areas. Future studies could use the findings to compare with data from other countries and continents.
Highlights
The crucial importance of studying land cover and use changes (LCUC) results from their being part of the “global changes” [1], constituting a major component [2]
A supporting argument is the fact that an important LCUC, urbanization, is considered a major driving force of biodiversity loss and biological homogenization [15], generating a disproportionate share of environmental impacts compared to the total area affected by it [16]
The aim of this study is to investigate the controversial relationship between biodiversity and urbanization by analyzing the avian diversity in Annaba, Algeria along an
Summary
The crucial importance of studying land cover and use changes (LCUC) results from their being part of the “global changes” [1], constituting a major component [2] They transform natural into man-dominated systems [3], threatening biodiversity [4], affecting the quality of water, land and air resources, ecosystem processes, functions, services, equilibrium, and resilience, and making an important impact on the climate system [5,6,7,8,9]. For these reasons, studying LCUC makes an important contribution to the sustainable development debate [6,10]. The Habitat II conference introduced the concept of “ecological footprint” to measure how much the new constructions, including infrastructure, affect the environment [22]
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