Identifying high quality habitat for declining grassland birds in an agricultural landscape

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Grassland birds are in steep decline throughout North America and these declines are caused mainly by regional habitat loss and degradation as a result of agricultural intensification. A key question is how can habitat quality be improved in agricultural landscapes to benefit declining grassland birds? Numerous studies have done inexpensive bird surveys to show that agricultural intensification is negatively correlated with species diversity and abundance of birds. However, these studies are insufficient for understanding how habitat restoration could increase productivity or decrease survival of sensitive species. Few studies have tested how different agricultural habitats impact the breeding success of declining grassland species. There is also an urgent need to study habitat selection of grassland songbirds in agricultural landscapes, both during and after nesting, to better understand how habitat quality affects breeding females. Prior studies have been hampered by