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Research | Open Access

Waterbird use of farm dams in south-eastern Australia: abundance and influence of biophysical and landscape characteristics

Andrew J. Hamilton1,2,3( ), Chloé Conort4, Aurore Bueno4, Christopher G. Murray5, James R. Grove6
Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Dookie Campus, Currawa, VIC 3647, Australia
Office of the Deputy ViceChancellor (Research and Innovation), Federation University Australia, Ballarat, VIC 3353, Australia
Department of Rural Health, Melbourne Medical School, 49 Graham Street, PO Box 6500, Shepparton, VIC 3632, Australia
École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse, 31326 Castanet Tolosan, France
Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia
Faculty of Science, Department of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia
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Abstract

Background

While agriculture has taken much environmental water in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, agricultural expansion has resulted in a vast number of farm dams, almost three-quarters of a million in the Murray-Darling Basin alone.

Methods

Over a summer we studied (1) waterbird abundance and species richness and (2) the influence of biophysical and landscape characteristics across 49 farm dams at a large mixed-enterprise farm in northern Victoria on the southern reach of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Results

On average, dams were found to host 27.1 ± 71.1 individuals/ha and 1.8 ± 2.9 species per pond. Such densities are comparable to those on natural wetlands. Dam surface area and perimeter and amount of vegetation were positively and strongly correlated with the Rallidae density (birds/ha), but no other parameters were strongly correlated with any other functional group. The landscape in which the dams were embedded had a highly significant effect (p < 0.001) on the number of birds found on a dam.

Conclusions

Our research needs to be complemented with further studies in other parts of the Basin and on other taxa, but given at our site they supported similar densities of individuals and species to natural wetlands, and given the fact that there are 710, 539 farm dams in the Murray-Darling Basin, which hosts much of Australia's waterbird fauna, it is reasonable to suggest that farm dams are overlooked, and possibly very important, avian biodiversity hotspots. It also highlights the importance of a landscape setting, in which dams are situated, on the number of birds using the dams.

Keywords

WaterbirdsWaterfowlFarm pondsZooplankton

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Avian Research
Volume 8 Issue 1,
January 2017
Article number: 2
DOI: 10.1186/s40657-016-0058-x
Cite this article:
J. Hamilton A, Conort C, Bueno A, et al. Waterbird use of farm dams in south-eastern Australia: abundance and influence of biophysical and landscape characteristics. Avian Research, 2017, 8(1): 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-016-0058-x

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Received: 28 September 2016
Accepted: 06 December 2016
Published: 19 January 2017
© The Author(s) 2017.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
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