In recent decades land cover change resulting from different types of human activity has severely reduced the original area of tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF). Deforested landscapes in neotropical America commonly have a heterogeneous structure (i.e. landscape context) with increasingly small forest patches immersed in an agricultural matrix. Often, this matrix is not completely devoid of trees, but contain numerous and widely spread arboreal elements. Many of these elements are remnants of the original forest, such as arboreal riparian belts. In 14 riparian belts of TMCF in central Veracruz, Mexico, we assessed the relationship between the attributes of the bird community that uses these belts and their vegetation attributes, as well as with landscape structure in their vicinity at four different scales (within 250, 500, 750 and 1000 m). Bird richness and abundance in riparian belts were positively related with mean tree height. Regarding landscape context, the amount of urban area in the vicinity of each belt was positively related with bird abundance at the four scales studied, explaining between 14 and 31% of spatial variation. However, the abundance of forest interior birds was negatively related with urban area, explaining from 46 to 50% of variation. Both, local (tree height) and landscape characteristics (urban and forest cover) influence differentially bird abundance in riparian belts of cloud forest. Thus, both kinds of variables should be relevant for designing management plans aimed at enhancing the conservation of the native avifauna of the cloud forest and its ecosystem services within transformed landscapes.

在最近的几十年中，由于人类活动类型不同而造成的土地覆盖变化严重减少了热带山地云雾森林（TMCF）的原始面积。在新热带美洲，森林砍伐的景观通常具有异质结构（即景观环境），越来越小的森林斑块浸没在农业基质中。通常，此矩阵并非完全没有树木，而是包含众多且分布广泛的树木元素。其中许多元素都是原始森林的残余物，例如树栖河岸带。在墨西哥韦拉克鲁斯州中部的14条TMCF河岸带中，我们评估了使用这些带的鸟类群落的属性与其植被属性之间的关系，以及它们在四个不同尺度下的附近景观结构之间的关系（250、500和500 ，750和1000 m）。河岸带鸟类的丰富度和丰度与平均树高呈正相关。关于景观背景，在四个研究尺度上，每个带附近的市区数量与鸟类的丰度呈正相关，解释了14％至31％的空间变化。但是，森林内部鸟类的丰富度与城市地区呈负相关，解释了从46％到50％的差异。局部（树高）和景观特征（城市和森林覆盖）都对云林河岸带的鸟类丰度有不同的影响。因此，这两种变量都应与设计管理计划有关，该管理计划旨在加强对转化林地内云森林原生动物及其生态系统服务的保护。