Center for Conservation Biology

The principal purpose of this work, jointly funded by the US Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division, and the California Department of Fish and Game, was to establish quantifiable baseline information on habitat associations and environmental variables that may be useful in predicting the presence or absence of a variety of birds and small mammals in coastal sage scrub of southern California.

The primary database consisted of four sets of data associated with up to 240 replicate points at a up to 22 coastal sage scrub sites in Riverside, Orange, and San Diego counties (not all points and sites were sampled in all years for all attributes).  For each point, we collected information on:  (1)  the species composition and structure of vegetation in the near vicinity of the point, (2) the landscape context of each point (for example, the proportion of urban land use within a 500-1000m radius), (3) the species of birds recorded at each point during spring and fall censuses in 1995, 1996, and 1997 (spring only), and (4)  the species and number of individuals of small mammal species recorded at each point during spring and fall live-trapping censuses in 1995 and 1996.  Most of the analyses focused on the habitat and landscape associations of individual species, and of communities.