Improving species distribution models to describe steppe bird occurence patterns and habitat selection in southern Portugal

Abstract

The birds of the steppe environments face a number of different threats relating to habitat degradation (such as agricultural intensification, land abandonment or afforestation), and the vast majority of species have unfavourable conservation status. Conservation measures require an understanding of species habitat preferences and their occurrence patterns and must be applied at the relevant spatial scales. This study, investigated the habitat selection and resulting distributions of the steppe bird community in southern Portugal, one of its strongholds. To this aim, it made use of large and balanced species location datasets and high quality environmental descriptive data (with a strong emphasis in remote sensing data), collected at two different spatial scales. It applied advanced processing techniques for information extraction, and it optimised the use of species distribution models through a robust methodological framework. Species responses and predictions were derived at the two scales, and a subsequent hierarchical approach was implemented for multi-scale model integration. This procedure resulted in new findings about the ecology of some of the species, particular spatial scale effects were identified and the distributions of the species were further described within the studied area. It also demonstrated that careful planning and the deep understanding of the data analysis methodologies used can result in significant advances in the scientific knowledge. Furthermore, it is recommended that the added-knowledge resulting from this study is incorporated into existing management practices, for an efficient conservation of the species and their habitats.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata