A Simple Solar Radiation Index for Wildlife Habitat Studies
| Autor: | Peter J. P. Gogan, Lynn R. Irby, John M. Vore, Kim A. Keating |
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| Rok vydání: | 2007 |
| Předmět: |
Ecological niche
Ungulate Ecology biology Range (biology) Niche differentiation Equinox Noon biology.organism_classification Latitude Habitat General Earth and Planetary Sciences Environmental science Physical geography Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation General Environmental Science |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Wildlife Management. 71:1344-1348 |
| ISSN: | 1937-2817 0022-541X |
| DOI: | 10.2193/2006-359 |
| Popis: | Solar radiation is a potentially important covariate in many wildlife habitat studies, but it is typically addressed only indirectly, using problematic surrogates like aspect or hillshade. We devised a simple solar radiation index (SRI) that combines readily available information about aspect, slope, and latitude. Our SRI is proportional to the amount of extraterrestrial solar radiation theoretically striking an arbitrarily oriented surface during the hour surrounding solar noon on the equinox. Because it derives from first geometric principles and is linearly distributed, SRI offers clear advantages over aspect-based surrogates. The SRI also is superior to hillshade, which we found to be sometimes imprecise and ill-behaved. To illustrate application of our SRI, we assessed niche separation among 3 ungulate species along a single environmental axis, solar radiation, on the northern Yellowstone winter range. We detected no difference between the niches occupied by bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) a... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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