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Social and Behavioral Sciences
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Anthropogenic disturbance; avoidance; biodiversity offsets; decision-support tools; displacement; energy infrastructure; grassland birds; landscape-level conservation goals; mitigation; oil development; waterfowl; wind energy.
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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Estimating Offsets For Avian Displacement Effects Of Anthropogenic Impacts, Jiill A. Shaffer, Charles R. Loesch, Deborah A. Buhl
Estimating Offsets For Avian Displacement Effects Of Anthropogenic Impacts, Jiill A. Shaffer, Charles R. Loesch, Deborah A. Buhl
USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Biodiversity offsetting, or compensatory mitigation, is increasingly being used in temperate grassland ecosystems to compensate for unavoidable environmental damage from anthropogenic developments such as transportation infrastructure, urbanization, and energy development. Pursuit of energy independence in the United States will expand domestic energy production. Concurrent with this increased growth is increased disruption to wildlife habitats, including avian displacement from suitable breeding habitat. Recent studies at energy-extraction and energy-generation facilities have provided evidence for behavioral avoidance and thus reduced use of habitat by breeding waterfowl and grassland birds in the vicinity of energy infrastructure. To quantify and compensate for this loss in …