One of the most striking and persistent ways humans dominate Earth is by changing land-cover as we settle a region. Much of our ecological understanding about this process comes from studies of birds, yet the existing literature is scattered, mostly decades old, and rarely synthesized or standardized.The twenty-seven contributions authored by leaders in the fields of avian and urban ecology present a unique summary of current research on birds in settled environments ranging from wildlands to exurban, rural to urban. Ecologists, land managers, wildlife managers, evolutionary ecologists, urban planners, landscape architects, and conservation biologists will find our information useful because we address the conservation and evolutionary implications of urban life from an ecological and planning perspective. Graduate students in these fields also will find the volume to be a useful summary and synthesis of current research, extant literature, and prescriptions for future work. All interested in human-driven land-cover changes will benefit from a perusal of this book because we present high altitude photographs of each study area.

Springer Book Archives

1. A historical perspective on urban bird research: trends, terms, and approaches.- 2. Worldwide urbanization and its effects on birds.- 3. Synanthropic birds of North America.- 4. Human perception and appreciation of birds: A motivation for wildlife conservation in urban environments of France.- 5. Quantifying the urban gradient: linking urban planning and ecology.- 6. Urbanization, avian communities, and landscape ecology.- 7. The importance of multi-scale analyses in avian habitat selection studies in urban environments.- 8. Urban birds: Population, community, and landscape approaches.- 9. Interactions among non-native plants and birds.- 10. Urban sprawl and juniper encroachment effects on abundance of wintering passerines in Oklahoma.- 11. Nest predator abundance and urbanization.- 12. Bird tolerance to human disturbance in urban parks of Madrid (Spain): Management implications.- 13. Settlement of breeding European Starlings in urban areas: importance of lawns vs. anthropogenic wastes.- 14. Variation in the timing of breeding between suburban and wildland Florida Scrub-Jays: Do physiologic measures reflect different environments?.- 15. The ecology of Western Gulls in habitats varying in degree of urban influence.- 16. Causes and consequences of expanding American Crow populations.- 17. Demographic and behavioral comparisons of suburban and rural American Crows.- 18. Nest success and the timing of nest failure of Florida Scrub-Jays in suburban and wildland habitats.- 19. Synurbanization of the Magpie in the Palearctic.- 20. Macaw abundance in relation to human population density in the western Amazon basin.- 21. Waterbird production in an urban center in Alaska.- 22. Creating a homogeneous avifauna.- 23. Avian community characteristics of urban greenspaces in St. Louis, Missour.- 24. The importance of the Chicago region and the "Chicago Wilderness" initiative for avian conservation.- 25. Do temporal trends in Christmas Bird Counts reflect the spatial trends of urbanization in southwestern Ohio?.- 26. Survey techniques and habitat relationships of breeding birds in residential areas of Toronto, Canada.- 27. Integrating avian ecology into emerging paradigms in urban ecology.