Local-scale Habitat Components Driving Bird Abundance in Eastern Deciduous Forests

Abstract Declining populations of forest songbirds in the eastern U.S. have emphasized a need for scientists and managers to understand habitat selection by birds in remnant patches of contiguous forest. Past work has identified effects of landscape-scale covariates on bird occurrence and abundance; however, less is known about the effects of local-scale forest structure. We applied a combination of forest inventory data and LiDAR-derived canopy height data to derive variables of local-scale forest structure in a managed forest. We then assessed the effects of these variables on the abundance of 18 forest bird species obtained from point counts, while accounting for imperfect detection using a combined distance and time-removal model. We found mean canopy height and terrain variables including elevation, slope, and aspect affected the local-scale abundance of the largest number of bird species and also had the largest effect sizes. Variables associated with vertical structure of the canopy were not import...