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As habitats become more fragmented, understanding landscape‐level effects on habitat quality becomes increasingly important. These effects include factors intrinsic to the habitat fragments, such as vegetation cover and structure, and extrinsic factors, such as the modifying influences of surrounding (matrix) habitats. We develop a spatial model, the Effective Area Model (EAM), that predicts the effects of matrix habitats on species abundances in habitat patches. Model predictions are based on two sets of parameters: measures of species abundances at various distances from habitat edges (“edge responses”) and measures of the size and shape of the habitat fragments. We test model predictions for bird assemblages occupying fragmented habitats in central coastal California. Predictions of the relative abundances of birds, based on results from previous studies at nearby sites, are made for six small (<3 ha …