Land Cover Patterns and
Avian Biodiversity in Southern Costa Rica: General
Model or Unique Case?
Principal Investigators: Catherine Lindell and
Walter Chomentowski.
The purpose of this project is to develop
statistical models to predict how land-cover
composition and arrangement in southern Costa Rica
affect total bird species richness and the richness
of subgroups of birds of particular interest.
Another goal is to test the general applicability of
the models by generating predictions of bird species
richnesses for central Costa Rica and comparing
these predictions with actual richnesses determined
from on-the-ground sampling.
This work was supported by NASA’s Interdisciplinary Science Program (NAG
5-9232). Please see the following website for a recent publication
stemming from this work -- http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/acv/0/0
(Lindell, C. A., W. H. Chomentowski, J. R. Zook, and S. A. Kaiser.
Generalizability of neotropical bird abundance and richness models.
Animal Conservation.)
The Center for Global Change & Earth Observations, Michigan
State University
218 Manly Miles Building, 1405 S. Harrison Road, East
Lansing, Michigan 48823, Phone: (517) 432-7774
