Ornitologia urbana: aplicações, desafios e perspectivas

Abstract

Research development in the field of biodiversity in urban environments, whether focusing on conservation or management, has become a reality within Ecology. Consequently, studying ecological relationships between various groups of organisms, whether fauna or flora, within this constantly changing ecosystem has increasingly been recognized as a solution for biodiversity maintenance. As a result, studies have applied various approaches within the urban context, including those focused on peri-urban areas, urbanization gradients, the creation of ecological corridors, the relationship of urban green spaces with biodiversity, and more recently, the implications of these studies for urban management. Among the studies conducted in cities, birds have been continuously used as models due to their charismatic nature, ease of observation, and diverse responses to urban characteristics. Thus, studies describing relationships between taxonomic and functional aspects of urban bird communities can inform potential impacts of urbanization on biodiversity and assist in forming public policies for sustainable urban landscape management. Accordingly, this thesis aimed to explore some facets of urban ecology and ornithology in the city of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil) from an interdisciplinary approach, including elements of architecture and urbanism for the generation of municipal public policies. In the first chapter, a spatially explicit index was developed to describe levels of environmental suitability for biodiversity (Urban Biodiversity Suitability index, or UBS). To create the UBS, various geospatial layers representing environmental and urban aspects of Belo Horizonte were overlaid. Subsequently, 33 green spaces with different types of use and management intensities (parks, clubs, cemeteries, squares, railway lines, among others) were selected, where 60 listening points were distributed. A total of 160 bird species were recorded in all these green spaces, representing nearly half of the species previously recorded in Belo Horizonte. The functional and taxonomic richness of birds observed at each of the 60 listening points was used to validate the UBS. We observed that the suitability levels described by our interdisciplinary and spatially explicit approach could describe different taxonomic and functional richness levels of birds in the studied areas. In the second chapter, the UBS was applied to evaluate patterns of urban fire distribution across the Belo Horizonte landscape. We observed that the highest frequency of fires occurs in locations with intermediate biodiversity suitability values. In the third chapter, we evaluated how local aspects, landscape, and spatial dimensions of the studied green spaces influence species abundance and the functional trait composition of Belo Horizonte's bird community. We found that local characteristics, mainly related to green space vegetation management, have a greater influence on avifauna. In the thesis's final chapter, a case study is presented where ornithology was put into practice for community engagement in preserving Belo Horizonte's last unprotected native vegetation remnant. We demonstrated how integration between academia, government, and society can aid in applying scientific knowledge to the management and planning of urban green areas. I believe the results presented in this thesis provide valuable information for sustainable urban landscape management, applicable not only in Belo Horizonte but also in other cities worldwide.