Effectiveness of ecological units for stratification of bird habitat in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska

摘要

For a comprehensive bird inventory of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska, we stratified the I million hectare study area by large, physiographically defined regions known as ecological units. Point-count data from the bird inventory were used to test the ability of the ecological units to differentiate bird assemblages, and compare the effectiveness of ecological units to fine-scale vegetation types. The ecological units were a synthesis of geology, landforms, soils, and vegetation mapped at a scale of 1:250,000; the vegetation types were based on vegetation within 50 m of the sample points. Nonparametric multivariate statistical tests showed that ecological units and vegetation types had similar success in differentiating bird assemblages, despite their different scales and conceptual bases. Analyses of individual bird species showed that both ecological units and vegetation types provide useful and complementary information about bird habitat selection. Ecological units have several advantages over vegetation types as sample-area strata: they are stable over time, logistically easier to sample in a large road-less study area, and they allow one to obtain a larger bird sample size through inclusion of birds detected at greater distances.