Impacts of Urbanization on Forest Bird Communities

Dan Shustack, Ph.D. Candidate
Advisor: Amanda Rodewald

Dan’s research interests focus on the relationships between humans and wild animal populations. Specifically, he uses birds as study species in order to understand how organisms respond and exist in human altered and impacted habitats. For his doctoral research, he is working in riparian forests in and around Columbus, OH. His advisor, Dr. Amanda Rodewald and her students have been collecting data in this system since 2001. Dan plans to continue this research and build upon these previous studies. Using a variety of field-based methods combined with GIS and modeling, Dan hopes to elucidate mechanisms by which birds are influenced at various scales by urbanization. The results of his research will provide insight into how riparian forests in urban and urbanizing landscape function as habitat for birds. Additionally, he expects the results of his dissertation will provide recommendations for management of urban riparian preserves that might best mediate the effects of human impacts.

Funding sources: National Science Foundation, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, and the School of Natural Resources at The Ohio State University