Multiple components of environmental change drive populations of breeding waders in seminatural grasslands

Environments are rapidly changing due to climate change, land-use, intensive agriculture and the impact of hunting on predator populations. Here we analysed long-term data recorded during 1928-2014 on the size of breeding populations of waders at two large nature reserves in Denmark, Vejlerne and Tipperne, to determine the effects of components of environmental change on breeding populations of waders. Waders are closely associated with coastal marshes and meadows, and such habitats have been reduced extensively during the last century with negative impacts on population trends of waterbirds. Environmental variables and counts of waders were temporally autocorrelated, and hence we used Generalized Least Square (GLS) by incorporating the first order autoregressive correlation structure in the analyses. We attempted to predict the abundance of waders for short-term trends for two nature reserves (35 years) and for long-term trends for one nature reserve (86 years), using precipitation, te...