Quantifying the spatial relationship between bird species’ distributions and landscape feature boundaries in southern Ontario, Canada

Autor: Marie-Josée Fortin, Andrew Couturier, Aleksandra E. Polakowska
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: Landscape Ecology. 27:1481-1493
ISSN: 1572-9761
0921-2973
DOI: 10.1007/s10980-012-9804-6
Popis: Understanding what features of the landscape affect species distribution is critical to effectively implement conservation strategies. This study investigates how a boundary analysis framework can be used to characterize the spatial association between boundaries (i.e., spatial locations of high rates of change) in bird species’ distributions and landscape features at the regional scale. The study area covers 92,000 km2 in southern Ontario (Canada) and extends from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence biome to the southern Canadian Shield biome. Landcover composition was derived from Ontario Land Cover data (1991–1998; 7 types) and elevation data were derived from the Canada3D digital elevation model. Bird distributions were estimated using indicator kriging based on point counts obtained from the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas data (2001–2005; 60 species). Boundaries were delineated for both data types using a 10 × 10 km cell resolution. Spatial boundary overlap statistics were used to quantify the spatial relationship between landscape features and bird boundaries and tested using a randomization procedure. There was significant positive association and spatial overlap between delineated landscape feature boundaries and bird boundaries. The number of spatially overlapping cells between the two boundary types was 67 out of 164 (41 %) and 76 % of cells were within 11.42 km of each other. These results were statistically significant (P
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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