New York: As per a study by Cornell University, an increasing decline in the population of birds is taking place across the globe.This study from multiple institutions was published today in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources. Loss and degradation of natural habitats and direct overexploitation of many species are cited as the key threats to avian biodiversity. Climate change is identified as an emerging driver of bird population declines."We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species," says lead author Alexander Lees, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom and also a research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Avian diversity peaks globally in the tropics and it is there that we also find the highest number of threatened species."The study says approximately 48% of existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines. Populations are stable for 39% of species. Only 6% are showing increasing population trends, and the status of 7% is still unknown. The study authors reviewed changes in avian biodiversity using data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List" to reveal population changes among the world's 11,000 bird species.The findings mirror the results of a seminal 2019 study which determined that nearly 3 billion breeding birds have been lost during the past 50 years across the United States and Canada. The lead author of that study is also an author of this global status report."After documenting the loss of nearly 3 billion birds in North America alone, it was dismaying to see the same patterns of population declines and extinction occurring globally," says conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg from the Cornell Lab, now retired. "Because birds are highly visible and sensitive indicators of environmental health, we know their loss signals a much wider loss of biodiversity and threats to human health and well-being."Despite their findings, study authors say there is hope for avian conservation efforts, but transformative change is needed."The fate of bird populations is strongly dependent on stopping the loss and degradation of habitats," says Lees. "That is often driven by demand for resources. We need to better consider how commodity flows can contribute to biodiversity loss and try to reduce the human footprint on the natural world.""Fortunately, the global network of bird conservation organizations taking part in this study have the tools to prevent further loss of bird species and abundance," adds Rosenberg. "From land protection to policies supporting sustainable resource-use, it all depends on the will of governments and of society to live side by side with nature on our shared planet." Information is key, and the study authors point out that the growth of public participation in bird monitoring and the advent of easy-to-use tools, such as the Cornell Lab's eBird database, make continental-scale breeding bird surveys, distribution atlases, and abundance models possible and help inform conservation efforts.This study was conducted by scientists from Manchester Metropolitan University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BirdLife International, the University of Johannesburg, Pontifical Xavierian University, and the Nature Conservation Foundation.&nbsp;—ANI

 As per a study by Cornell University, an increasing decline in the population of birds is taking place across the globe.

Researchers Observe Increasing Decline In Bird Population Globally

The Birds

New Dehli (The Hawk): A new study has found that forest fires which plague different parts of India, especially during the summer season play a major role in reducing solar power production in India. Such analysis&nbsp;of the energy and financial losses due to the direct and indirect effects of forest fires on the production of solar plants can help grid operators to plan and schedule power generation, as also the distribution, supply, security, and overall stability of power production.Recently, solar energy generation has been widely used in developing countries such as India which has sufficient solar resources. However, several factors like clouds, aerosols, and pollution generated from various sources limit the solar irradiance causing performance issues in the photovoltaic and concentrated solar power plant installations. Large-scale development of a solar energy system requires proper planning, and there is a need to estimate the solar potentialKeeping this in mind, a group of researchers at the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital an autonomous research institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Govt. of India, and the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), Greece tried to trace the factors that reduce solar energy production. They found that apart from clouds and aerosols, forest fires play a very crucial role in reducing solar energy production.The study published in the international peer-reviewed journal&nbsp;Remote Sensing&nbsp;shows that the aerosol optical depth values were up to 1.8 during the study period (January to April 2021), during which massive forest fire events led to attenuation of total solar radiation incident on a horizontal surface (global horizontal irradiance- GHI ) and solar radiation received from the sun without having been scattered (beam horizontal irradiance --BHI) by 0 to 45%. During this period the air masses were renewed quickly mitigating the smoke contribution to the total aerosol loads and were dominated by continental pollution.The scientists used remote sensing data for the research and studied the impact of aerosols and clouds on the solar energy potential over the Indian region with extensive analysis and model simulations. They also provided an analytical financial analysis in terms of revenue and losses due to clouds and aerosols.The research was led by Dr. Umesh Chandra Dumka, Scientist, ARIES, with contributions by Prof. Panagiotis G Kosmopoulos, Scientist, NOA, and Dr.&nbsp;Piyushkumar N. Patel, Scientist,&nbsp;Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA,&nbsp;and provided a comprehensive investigation of the impact of aerosols and clouds on solar energy production over the region.The findings of the present study will drastically increase the awareness among decision-makers about the effect of forest fires on energy management and planning at a country level. In addition, this research can support the mitigation processes and policies for climate change and its direct and indirect impacts on sustainable development.

 A new study has found that forest fires which plague different parts of India, especially during the summer season play a major role in reducing solar power production in India. Such analysis of the energy and financial losses due to the direct and indirect effects of forest fires on the production of solar plants can help grid operators to plan and schedule power generation, as also the distribution, supply, security, and overall stability of power production.

Forest Fires can be an important factor in reducing solar power production in India

A new study has found that forest fires which plague different parts of India, especially during the summer season play a major role in reducing solar power production in India.

Madison (Wisconsin): Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed the maps at a fine-enough resolution to help conservation managers focus their efforts where they are most likely to help birds -- in individual counties or forests, rather than across whole states or regions.The study was published in the journal, 'Ecological Applications'.The maps span the contiguous US and predicted the diversity of birds that live in a given area, related by traits such as nesting on the ground or being endangered.Those predictions were based on both detailed observations of birds and environmental factors that affect bird ranges, such as the degree of forest cover or temperature in an area."With these maps, managers have a tool they didn't have before that allows them to get both a broad perspective as well as information at the level of detail that's necessary for their action plans," said Anna Pidgeon, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison who helped lead the development of the maps."Across the world, we're seeing huge species losses. In North America, 3 billion birds have been lost since 1970. This is across virtually all habitat types," said author Kathaleen Carroll."And we're seeing a disconnect between what scientists produce for conservation and how that translates to boots-on-the-ground management," she added.Many resources previously available to conservation managers, such as species range maps, are both at too broad of a scale to be useful and not rigorously tested for accuracy. To overcome those challenges, Carroll and her team wanted to develop data-driven maps of existing bird biodiversity. They produced the maps by extrapolating observations of birds from scientific surveys to mile-by-mile predictions of where different species really live.Those predictions were based on factors including rainfall, the degree of forest cover and the extent of human influence on the environment, such as the presence of cities or farms.To improve the predictive power of their maps, the scientists clustered individual species by behaviour, habitat, diet, or conservation status -- such as fruit eaters or forest dwellers. These groups are called guilds.Many conservation decisions happen at the guild level, rather than at the level of species. Guilds can also make up for limited information on the most endangered species.The final maps covered 19 different guilds at resolutions of 0.5, 2.5 and 5 kilometres. While the finest-grained maps were not as accurate, the 2.5-kilometre-resolution maps provided a good balance of accuracy and usefulness for realistic conservation needs, said scientists.At the 5-kilometre resolution, the maps provide the greatest accuracy and are useful to conservationists operating across large areas."We see this being really applicable for things like forest management action plans for the U.S. Forest Service," said Carroll."They can pull up these maps for a group of interest, and they can get a very clear indication of what areas where they might want to limit human use," she added.The maps may also help private land conservancies decide where to prioritize limited resources to maximize biodiversity protections.&nbsp;—ANI

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed the maps at a fine-enough resolution to help conservation managers focus their efforts where they are most likely to help birds -- in individual counties or forests, rather than across whole states or regions.

Researchers Develop Maps Of Bird Species To Protect Biodiversity

London: A new study has found that weaver birds that eat seeds flock together and nest in colonies more commonly than those species that eat insects.For the first time, the study statistically supports an influential ecological hypothesis on social behaviour first proposed 58 years ago.The findings were published in the journal 'The American Naturalist'.Weaver birds are a family of 118 songbird species that live mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and are so-called because of the elaborate construction of their nests.Whilst some species live on the savannah feeding on seeds, other species live in the forest and mostly dine on insects.The researchers looked at data collected from previously published studies of many weaver species to investigate the relationships between diet, habitat and social behaviour.They observed that birds living in the open savannah tended to flock together, foraging in groups to help find the best sources of seeds. The same birds also nested in large colonies and often had a polygamous breeding behaviour, pairing with multiple mates during each season.In contrast, the species living in the forest tended to be solitary foragers and nesters that did not flock together or live in colonies. These birds tended to be monogamous breeders with a single mate per season.The research, for the first time, statistically supports the ecological hypotheses of social evolution developed by a British ethologist, John Crook, who first proposed the link between diet, habitat and social behaviour in 1964. Crook's study became a textbook example of ecological effects on mating systems, and it has influenced generations of behavioural ecologists.The new study, in addition, also found that diet and habitat predicted sexual dimorphism -- the difference in appearance between the sexes. In polygamous species, the males often have more colourful and flamboyant plumage whereas in monogamous species the males and the females tend to look identical.Professor Tamas Szekely, from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath who initiated and led the study, said, "For birds that feed on seeds in the open savannah, flocking together improves feeding efficiency because it makes it easier to locate patches where there are abundant seeds.Professor Szekely continued, "Flocking also lowers the risk of predation out in the open by providing them safety in numbers. However, in open habitats such as the savannah, there are limited nesting sites, meaning the birds live together in a colony and this often leads to polygamous breeding."Professor Szekely explained, "On the other hand, forest-dwelling, insect-eating birds must search a wider area for food as insects are more widely distributed. The relatively safer, closed habitat of the forest provides lots of suitable nesting sites, so the birds don't need to live close together. This more solitary social system also means they are more likely to stick with the same mate during the breeding season.""The associations between diet, habitat and social behaviour in weavers have been suspected for decades, but this is the first time they have been proven by statistical analysis. This study is particularly exciting because we've also shown the complex links for the first time between food type, grouping behaviour and mating systems using phylogenetic analysis in an unusually diverse group of songbirds," Professor Szekely added.The first author of the study, Dr Zitan Song, a post-doctoral researcher in Professor Yang Liu's group at the Sun Yat-sen University in China, is now planning a follow-up study. This aims to verify the generality of Crook's theory by investigating the associations between diet, habitat and social behaviour in a wide range of bird species.The research team is intending to push the frontiers even further by testing the validity of Crook's hypothesis in mammals, fish and insects. They will also augment these large-scale studies by testing aspects of mating-system evolution that have emerged in recent years, such as the effects of sex ratio in the population.&nbsp;—ANI

A new study has found that weaver birds that eat seeds flock together and nest in colonies more commonly than those species that eat insects.

Researchers Find Vegetarian Birds Are More Sociable Than Insect Eaters