Investigating the loss of bird habitat with regards to land use in Seyhan river and Tuz lake wild life reserve

The goal of this research was to investigate the impacts of land use on bird habitat fragmentation at Seyhan River and Tuz Lake Wild Life Reserve. In this research, the number of the birds and their behavior were recorded during the surveys performed at six sample plots within four habitat types to describe the bird species and estimate their population sizes. Additionally four sample plots were selected to identify the breeding and nesting success of Kentish plover {Charadrius alexandrinus). To identify the habitat quality, habitat ranking was made by considering; species diversity of each habitat types, total size of the populations, number of bird species in incubation period, number of endangered species and Shannon Weiner (1992) diversity index. It can be concluded that two habitat types including freshwater pond and lagoon out of four were identified as the largest conservation value respectively. Freshwater pond have priority in conservation due to having its limited area, rareness and supporting endangered species. Key words: Karataş, Tuzla, Shore birds, Charadrius alexandrinus, Shannon Weiner Diversity index. II