| Biodiversity issues are generally discussed on global or regional scales, less often on local scales. The management of biodiversity at large scales often involves setting national policies, whereas managing biodiversity at local scales requires decisions based upon philosophical and economic tradeoffs. Site-specific administration of policies often depends on assessment of many inadequately studied variables (e.g., topography, microclimate, and vegetation). The objective of this dissertation is to address wildlife-habitat use in managed forests in East Texas using a three-tiered analysis of spatial scales, focusing inward from the landscape to the stand and then to the patch. Spatial complexity, issues of scaling, and the effects of different management practices on species diversity in managed forests in East Texas are presented in three sections. The first section is a literature review and synthesis of avian biodiversity in managed forests in Eastern Texas. Using approximately twenty-five years of published and unpublished data to address bird diversity on pinelands of different ages, I present a habitat-based conservation perspective, rather than individual-, threatened-, or endangered-species plans. Recommendations for the management of bird diversity in loblolly pine plantations are provided and highlight the importance of collaborative plans to manage landscapes for habitat diversity. In the next section, I present a deterministic compartment model for bird diversity in loblolly and shortleaf pine plantations. Habitat availability, habitat fragmentation, edge effects, and the diversity and configuration of habitat patches are addressed in order to assess the consequences of altering the abundance and spatial pattern of stands. Twelve Neotropical migratory bird species were modeled for forests under a 25-year rotation schedule. The last section examines small patch-scale patterns in terrestrial vertebrates. The spatio-temporal analysis looks at the effects of site-specific harvest treatments on the abundance and diversity of reptiles and amphibians. Whereas broad analyses provided information on trends and effects on species richness, within-patch analyses provided information on how to best apply harvest treatments with minimum impact to these species. Effective conservation of biodiversity in managed forests will require assessment, monitoring, and analysis at multiple spatial scales. |
