ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Geographic, Taxonomic and Metric Gaps in Biodiversity Research Limit Evidence-Based Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes: An Umbrella Review.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Continental-wide prioritization of protected areas to address global and habitat-specific goals for avian biodiversity conservation.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- West European Hedgehog (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Increasing bird diversity in a landscape in transition.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Predicted decline in common bird and butterfly species even under conservation policy scenarios in Europe.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Drivers of Stopover Distribution Across Two Autumn Migration Routes of a Long-Distance Afro-Palearctic Migrant, the Common Cuckoo (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Providing regular and frequent maps of losses and gains of farmland birds based on European monitoring data.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Environmental Bridgebuilding: Connecting People Through Nature Conservation. The Example of the Barn Owl.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Perceived Effects of Agri-Environmental Management Practices on Public Good Delivery.Environmental management · 2026Article
- Partially occluded weed classification using vision transformers and convolutional neural networks for precision agriculture.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Typology of Agricultural Land Systems in Germany to Support Tailoring of Agri-Environmental Schemes to Reduce Pressures on Farmland Biodiversity.Environmental management · 2026Article
- An Ecological Impact Assessment Framework and Integrated Management Pathway for Large-Scale Chemical Mosquito Control in Urban Areas.ACS environmental Au · 2026Article
- Young adults in eastern Germany know dandelion and sparrows but few farmland species.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2026Article
- Comparison of avian biodiversity and community similarity between Nansihu wetland and the Yellow River Delta wetland across different seasons.BMC zoology · 2026Article
- Potential of Agricultural Plantations and Orchards to Support Understory Forest Bird Diversity in Southeast Asia.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Marine protected areas marginally offset anthropogenic declines in tropical reef fish contributions to nature and people.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Ubiquitous presence of pesticides in feathers of common UK birds.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2026Article
- Transfer of veterinary parasiticides from the fur lining bird's nest to eggs and chicks.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2026Article
- Comparing ecological relevance of climate velocity indices.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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51 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Declines in European bird populations are reported for decades but the direct effect of major anthropogenic pressures on such declines remains unquantified. Causal relationships between pressures and bird population responses are difficult to identify as pressures interact at different spatial scales and responses vary among species. Here, we uncover direct relationships between population time-series of 170 common bird species, monitored at more than 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, over 37 y, and four widespread anthropogenic pressures: agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature change over the last decades. We quantify the influence of each pressure on population time-series and its importance relative to other pressures, and we identify traits of most affected species. We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on species' thermal preferences. Our results not only confirm the pervasive and strong effects of anthropogenic pressures on common breeding birds, but quantify the relative strength of these effects stressing the urgent need for transformative changes in the way of inhabiting the world in European countries, if bird populations shall have a chance of recovering.
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