Wetland characteristics affect abundance and diversity of wintering birds: A case study in South‐Western Iran

Water availability is an important driver of bird population change, and its effects are likely to increase in coming decades under climate change. Here we assess effects of temperature, precipitation, and water area on wintering bird populations in Miyangaran Wetland in southwestern Iran. Modeling methods including, generalized linear model (GLM) and hierarchical partitioning were used to examine the relative importance of variables. The number of wintering species, inhabiting the wetland, varied among years, ranging from 10 to 48 species. The total number of wintering birds showed a significant decreasing trend. A significant increasing trend was obtained for shorebirds, while waterfowl species were significantly decreased. The GLM showed that species abundance, richness, and diversity were significantly correlated with the standardized precipitation index (SPI), annual precipitation, and normalized difference water index (NDWI). Hierarchical partitioning analysis also identified NDWI, SPI, and annual precipitation as the most important variables with average independent effects of 35, 36 (p < .01) and 17% (p < .05), respectively. Our results revealed that the water area plays a major role in determining the structure of bird diversity and abundance, affecting both waterfowl and shorebirds.