Synthesis of reviewed
studies
Our structured search returned studies that undertook waterbird habitat
quality assessments in two main ways: studies that measured some
biophysical attribute(s) of the habitat; and studies that measured some
attribute(s) of waterbirds themselves to infer underlying habitat
quality (Table 1). Studies that measured attributes of waterbirds
themselves could be further broken down into four sub-categories:
studies that directly measured waterbird demographic characteristics;
studies that measured waterbird body condition; studies that measured
waterbird behaviour; and studies that measured waterbird distribution
(Table 1). There were also studies that used methods from a combination
of these categories.
Table 1. Catalogue of methods used
to assess waterbird habitat quality in studies reviewed as part of the
structured literature review. For each method, examples of studies that
used the method are given along with an indication of the support or
lack thereof for the given method. A ‘—’ symbol in the Supporting
evidence and contradictory evidence columns indicates that no data for
these cells were found in the reviewed papers. The spatial (site,
region, flyway) and temporal (instantaneous, within-season, annual)
scales that data collection pertains to are also given.