earticle

영어

Urban forests are critical for bird inhabitation in urban ecosystems with little greenspace area, because they provide birds with cover and food. The bird inhabitation contributes to the vitality of urban ecosystems and serves as a resource of ecological learning and recreation. Bird species diversity is affected by various characteristics of urban forest structure and distribution such as area, age, habitat diversity, and connectivity. This study analyzed structural differences of urban forests associated with bird species diversity. Regression models to easily estimate bird species diversity were developed using areal size and vertical structure of urban forests as independent variables. All the regression models showed high fitness with r2 values of 0.91-0.98. Bird species diversity tended to increase as the areal size of urban forests got larger. For the urban forest of 10 ha, about three bird species inhabited single-layered planting of only shrubs, seven bird species inhabited single-layered planting of only trees, and ten bird species inhabited multi-layered planting of both shrubs and trees. Thus, bird species diversity for the multi-layered planting was at least 2.2-3.3 times greater than that for the single-layered planting. Study results could be useful in evaluating bird habitat services of urban forests and exploring desirable design strategies to improve bird species diversity.