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.