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Grant support

Authors are grateful to Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha for providing us the annual RLPs surveys, and to all regional wardensthat have participated in those. We are very grateful to Barbara G. Montenegro (Consejeria de Agricultura, Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Rural D.G. Desarrollo Rural; Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha) for providing information on organic crops and to Mario Fernandez Tizon for helping with the GIS processing of this information. This study was funded by the project AGROPERDIZ (SBPLY/17/180501/000245; Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and "Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional") . Xabier Cabodevilla was supported by a PhD Grant, financed by the Basque Country Government (Grants no. PRE_2018_2_0273) .

Analysis of institutional authors

Cabodevilla, XCorresponding Author

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May 25, 2022
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Farmland composition and farming practices explain spatio-temporal variations in red-legged partridge density in central Spain

Publicated to:Science Of The Total Environment. 799 149406- - 2021-08-10 799(), DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149406

Authors: Cabodevilla, Xabier; Estrada, Alba; Mougeot, Francois; Jimenez, Jose; Arroyo, Beatriz;

Affiliations

CSIC UCLM JCCM, Inst Invest Recursos Cineget IREC, Ronda Toledo 12, Ciudad Real 13005, Spain - Author
Univ Basque Country UPV EHU, Fac Pharm, Dept Zool & Anim Cell Biol, Paseo Univ 7, Vitoria 01006, Alava, Spain - Author
Univ Malaga, Dept Anim Biol, Biogeog Divers & Conservat Lab, Malaga, Spain - Author

Abstract

Many farmland bird populations are declining, and their negative trends are often associated with changes in land-use or farming practices, including the use of agrochemicals. The red-legged partridge (RLP) is a Mediterranean farmland game species of high socio-economic importance whose populations are thought to have declined sharply since the mid-20th century associated with farmland changes. However, no large-scale studies have tested whether abundance or trends of RLP are related to farmland composition or management. We used hierarchical distance sampling models to estimate RLP abundance in 2010 in central Spain (Castilla-La Mancha), a main European population stronghold of this species. We studied associations between RLP density and land-uses (including variation in management: irrigated crops or organic farming). We also assessed regional abundance variation over seven years (2010-2017) and its relationship with changes in land-use. Our results show that RLP abundance increased with the availability of natural vegetation and traditional rain-fed vineyards, but decreased with increasing proportions of tree crops and irrigated vineyards; the latter association was less pronounced in areas sensitive to nitrate contamination in water, where the amount of fertilizers applied in farmland and use of certain farming practices is more strictly regulated. These results support the idea that increases in intensive vineyards are detrimental to the RLP. We also report a strong population decline of RLP in the region, with a 51% abundance reduction in seven years. This decline was steeper in areas where more natural vegetation had been lost and where ecological tree crops had increased. Overall, our results indicate that changes in land-use (type of crop, or the destruction of natural vegetation in farmland) and farming practices (e.g. use of irrigation in certain crops, use of nitrates) have important impacts on this farmland bird, affecting both spatial distribution and population dynamics. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

abundanceagriculture intensificationalectoris rufahierarchical distance samplingland-useAbundanceAgricultural intensificationAgriculture intensificationAlectoris rufaAlectoris-rufaBird diversityConservationField marginsGame managementHabitatHeterogeneityHierarchical distance samplingLand-useManagementOlive grovesR package

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Science Of The Total Environment due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2021, it was in position 26/279, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Environmental Sciences. Notably, the journal is positioned above the 90th percentile.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 4.5, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Aug 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-08-09, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 8
  • Google Scholar: 12

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-08-09:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 66.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 65 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 56.25.
  • The number of mentions on the social network Facebook: 1 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 3 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions in news outlets: 5 (Altmetric).

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (CABODEVILLA BRAVO, XABIER) .

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been CABODEVILLA BRAVO, XABIER.