Alpine habitat dynamics and avian biodiversity in different land use regimes on the eastern Tibetan Plateau Abstract: Biodiversity–environment relationships are of core interest to both ecologists and conservationists. Ecological models have predicted local biodiversity patterns in relation to distributions of key environmental variables in space and time. Anthropogenic activities further complicate the biodiversity–environment relationships. Human disturbances can impact directly on the coexistence of species by intervening in the processes of competitive exclusion. Human land uses modulate the habitat dynamics of natural systems and influence the biodiversity patterns therein which is often accompanied by a legacy effect. Different conservation principles have arisen based on positive or negative perceptions of the human impacts on biodiversity. For instance the wilderness approach advocates keeping nature pristine and undisturbed by humans. Contrarily the cultural landscape approach puts current ecosystem structure into the context of evolution and human history thus suggests that human created habitats are crucial in maintaining the locally adapted species assemblage. <br>The goal of this dissertation was to understand the human–habitat–biodiversity interconnections through conducting an interdisciplinary study in the alpine grassland landscape of the eastern Qinghai Tibetan Plateau which is one center of bird endemism of Asia. The research also aimed to make science based conservation recommendations for the protection of the Tibetan avifauna.<br>To disentangle human impacts on the vegetation changes of alpine pastures in eastern Tibet I integrated oral history study participatory GIS and remote sensing analysis of Landsat and MODIS time series in order to detect the turning points of land use and land cover changes. Results showed that privatizations of livestock and pastures since 1984 triggered the recent grassland degradation. South facing mild slope winter pastures located in higher altitudes were most susceptible to the degradation. With a time lag of thirty years the degradation turning point was detected in the year 2006. However the non synchronized land use and land cover changes confused local people’s perceptions of the causality. This finding bears implications for conservation management which puts increasing weight on the traditional ecological knowledge (chapter 5).<br>To examine the species–environment relationship of the eastern Tibetan bird assemblage I first developed a comprehensive set of habitat predictors empl ...