Population trends and variability within bird communities are amplified by intense land use

Human activities affect wild communities through significant long-term changes in population abundance as well as changes in short-term fluctuations. However, studies that focus on one of these stability components tend to overlook the other. Using community time-series data from the French Breeding Bird survey, we investigate the variations of community-scale long-term changes (population trends) and short-term fluctuations (detrended variability) across habitat categories and with land use intensity for 905 communities in continental France. We show that communities within agricultural and urban habitats were less stable than woodland communities for both components of stability. Moreover, within habitat categories, only detrended variability increases with land use intensity, while the drivers of local long-term population changes remain to be elucidated. These findings highlight that measuring several stability dimensions provides a better understanding of the links between local land use and community temporal dynamics.