Impact of recent changes in agricultural land use on farmland bird trends

Trends of farmland birds and non-field nesters were negatively related to increasing maize cultivation at the landscape scale. We further found that population trends of field nesters reacted region-specifically and performed worst in an agricultural region that was characterised by the strongest increase of maize and decrease of crop diversity, indicating a negative effect of broad-scale landscape homogenisation. To counteract the process of spatial and temporal land-use homogenisation and to inform policy-makers on options for mitigation, we conclude that conservation actions should be tailored at a regional scale to halt or even reverse negative farmland bird population trends.