Large areas of the Arctic remain poorly surveyed, creating biological knowledge gaps as scientists and managers grapple with issues of increasing resource extraction and climate change. We modelled spatiotemporal patterns in abundance for avian species in the low Arctic ecosystem near the community of Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, from 2015 to 2017. We employed six habitat covariates, including terrain ruggedness and freshwater cover, and contrasted the influence of elevation with distance from coast, as well as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI; a proxy for vegetative productivity) with the normalized difference water index (NDWI; a proxy for vegetation water content). Our results most clearly show the importance of low elevation, large amounts of freshwater and high vegetative productivity for Arctic birds at relatively local scales (<1 km 2 ). Although NDVI more consistently appeared in competitive models of abundance, NDWI was particularly important in predicting abundance for shorebirds, ducks, Tundra Swans ( Cygnus columbianus ) and Lapland Longspurs ( Calcarius lapponicus ), demonstrating that it may be a more influential habitat covariate than NDVI for species that frequent habitats with wet vegetation. We also documented apparent shifts in habitat between early and late summer for geese, which were more strongly associated with freshwater later in the season, likely due to the presence of flightless juveniles and moulting adults at that time. Our study illustrates a relatively easy to implement survey methodology for avian species, provides baseline information for an Arctic study area that had not previously been surveyed intensively, and includes species that are underrepresented in previous literature.

中文翻译：

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加拿大北极地区努纳武特兰金湾鸟类分布和丰度的生态决定因素

北极的大片地区仍未得到充分调查，随着科学家和管理人员努力应对日益增加的资源开采和气候变化问题，造成了生物学知识空白。我们对 2015 年至 2017 年努勒维特兰金湾群落附近低北极生态系统中鸟类物种丰度的时空模式进行了建模。我们采用了六个栖息地协变量，包括地形崎岖程度和淡水覆盖，并对比了海拔与距离的影响。海岸，以及归一化差异植被指数（NDVI；植物生产力的代表）与归一化差异水指数（NDWI；植被含水量的代表）。我们的结果最清楚地表明了低海拔、大量淡水和高营养生产力对相对局部范围内的北极鸟类的重要性（< 1 公里 2)。尽管 NDVI 更一致地出现在竞争性丰度模型中，但 NDWI 在预测滨鸟、鸭子、苔原天鹅 (Cygnus columbianus) 和拉普兰长马刺 (Calcarius lapponicus) 的丰度方面尤为重要，表明它可能是比 NDVI 更有影响力的栖息地协变量频繁栖息于湿植被栖息地的物种。我们还记录了夏初和夏末鹅栖息地的明显变化，这与季节后期的淡水更密切相关，这可能是由于当时存在不会飞的幼鸟和蜕皮的成鸟。我们的研究说明了一种相对容易实施的鸟类物种调查方法，为以前没有进行过深入调查的北极研究区提供基线信息，