Modelling the effects of forest fragmentation on certain species of forest-breeding birds

✍ Scribed by J. Lauga; J. Joachim

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 618 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0921-2973
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00130030

✦ Synopsis

The influence of forest fragmentation was assessed on the abundance of six forest-breeding bird species. The study area (2327 sq Km) was located in south-west France. The forest cover, extracted from a Landsat MSS scene, was first reduced to a grid of 5865 quadrats, each 650 by 650 m. Two values were attributed with each quadrat: Quadrat Forest Cover (QFC), expressed in percent; and a local measure of forest fragmentation -the Neighbouring Forest Cover (NFC) -expressed on a 0-1000 scale. The distribution of six forestbreeding species was sampled on 556 quadrats.

For each species, the local abundance appears to be more correlated with the fragmentation-oriented NFC value than with the local QFC value. For three species out of six (song thrush, robin, chaffinch) an incidence model, based on the Logistic regression, was built. A correct fit was obtained.

An incidence map of these species was then built up over the whole study area. Their regional status was then estimated, for a sampling cost of less than 10% of censusing all the area.