Assessing the impacts of road traffic disturbance on the UK’s bird populations.

The populations of many once common and widespread wild bird species have declined over the last few decades. In many cases, these declines are attributed to agricultural change, but for some species the causes remain unclear. Previous research has shown that population densities of many birds are depressed near roads. For sensitive species close to busy road networks, these effects have been detected at distances of several kilometres. The UK’s dense and increasingly busy road network could therefore influence national bird populations, and rising volumes of traffic might explain a significant proportion of the observed declines in wild bird populations. This project will relate the substantial spatial variation across much of the UK in bird population trends to spatial variation in road traffic trends using extensive spatially explicit long-term bird monitoring and road data. It is also hoped to do similar analyses of bat monitoring data. The student will also collect new data on possible screening effects of roadside structures to assess how any impacts can be mitigated. The successful applicant will have strong GIS and data analysis skills, a good general knowledge of bird ecology and, ideally but not essentially, experience of undertaking field transects.
Supervisors
This is a collaborative project that will be supervised by four people with complementary expertise: Prof. Andrew Balmford (primary supervisor), Prof. Rhys Green, Dr Paul Donald (RSPB) and Dr Stuart Newson (BTO).