By Christine Rega (BES)
Greetings from one of the two urban LTER’s in Baltimore,
Maryland! This summer we are hosting a
variety of projects in “Charm City” across disciplines and institutions to
understand how urban ecosystems function and change over time. I thought I’d talk a bit about my
dissertation research, which falls within Baltimore
Ecosystem Study’s Biodiversity project, the goal of which to determine the
relationship between “forest patch origin, size class, and adjacent land use
type on species composition and abundance”.
The overarching goal of my research is to understand the
role of vacant lots within the network of urban greenspaces, specifically if
they are sustainable habitat sources for bird communities, within a
metacommunity framework. Baltimore has
been experiencing a 4.6% population decline over the past ten years, resulting
in over 17,000 parcels of vacant land.
This summer is my first field season out to these very interesting lots,
which range greatly in their composition and structure (below). My goals this season are to assess bird
communities in these lots, in addition to monitoring nests, determining body
condition values for American robins, and resighting color bands to determine
any movement between these sites.
