Changes of diversity and abundance of aquatic avifauna in relation to the physical-geographical environment

Changes of diversity and abundance of aquatic avifauna in relation to the physical-geographical environment ABSTRACT. This thesis looked into the issue of impact of changes of suitable habitat structure and climatic conditions, as the most discussed environmental factors, on model group of organisms - waterbirds. In the first part there was characterized effect of these factors on model group by the available literature. The relevant environmental variables were processed in the second part. For analysis of impact of these environmental factors on abundance and diversity of aquatic avifauna there were used data from International Waterbird Census in January term from 93 sites throughout the Czech Republic. Data were chosen for the period 1975, 1990 and 2006, in accordance with the database CORINE Land Cover. As multivariate data analysis there were used redundancy analysis (RDA) and mixed models with random effects, which showed significant associations with both weather conditions and other environmental factors. Selected environmental variables contributed substantially to the explanation of variability in species data, that was also tested suitability of their use. Keywords: physical-geographical environment, climate change, land cover, habitat structure, biodivesity, waterbird