The integration of airborne remote sensing data and field-based territory mapping applied to the understanding of habitat selection by woodland birds

摘要

Data derived from remote sensing has long been employed in the fields of ecology and species conservation. Optical data from satellite-borne instruments (e.g. Landsat Thematic Mapper) has commonly been used to map large-scale habitats and estimate species distributions and abundance through extrapolation. Detailed analyses of habitat structure are limited, however, by the two-dimensionality and relatively coarse resolution (commonly approx30 m) of such imagery when compared to tools such as airborne lidar. High spatial resolution (< 1 m) lidar can characterise the three-dimensional structure of large areas of habitat in great detail and, as such, is ideal for the analysis of ecological patterns and processes in the spatially complex environments of woodlands. The field of bird ecology has seen the application of recent advances in the ability of lidar to characterise the multi-layered structure of woodland habitats, such as the distribution of understorey vegetation below the tree canopy, and the availability of dispersed resources such as dead trees. Previously limited to ground-based sampling methods of vegetation analysis, bird ecologists can now quantify the vegetation structure of entire bird territories, or buffers around nest sites or other areas of interest, in unparalleled detail.