Prediction of historical forest habitat patterns using binomial distributions and simple Boolean logic from high spatial resolution remote sensing

摘要

The identification of forest habitat. its spatial pattern and use by selected taxa is a vital step for the protection of biodiversity. The use of airborne videography and frequency distribution models based on historical habitat complexity data can provide detailed information on the spatial and temporal variation of habitat, respectively. The two techniques, however, have not been jointly applied to link the temporal variation in habitat to the spatial variation of habitat over the landscape to provide a complete historical picture of the variation of habitat quality of a forest estate. In this paper, a processing methodology is developed which allows the current spatial distribution of habitat quality to be used as a base to make retrospective predictions of the spatial extent and pattern of habitat quality over the landscape. This is achieved by projecting the spatial distribution of habitat complexity scores derived from the videography, backward in time using a combination of simple Boolean logic, estimated binomial distributions, and the use of random fluctuations to mimic natural forest dynamics that are likely to have occurred over the modeling period. The simulations provide information on the type and condition of habitat in recent history and can be linked to models predicting the abundance of a variety of common and endangered taxa. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. References: 34