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The ecological interpretation of satellite imagery with special reference to bird habitats

Abstract:

This chapter presents the preliminary results from two case studies in which census data of upland bird species have been used in conjunction with vegetation ground survey and satellite data to establish and test models of the relationships between land cover and spatial pattern and selected upland bird species. Two analytical approaches are used based on: 1. relating species abundance to habitat data using regression; and 2. calculating the probability of presence of a species using an inductive learning procedure for pattern recognition based on Bayes' theorem. Results suggest that probabilistic modelling based on habitat suitability criteria is a successful method for pbkp_redicting the distribution (presence/absence) of selected upland bird species. The alternative method based on regression analysis for the pbkp_rediction of bird abundance, showed significant correlations between land cover and bird numbers for the 1988 data set, but testing of the model on an independent data set for 1989 was less successful. However, it would be premature to abandon this technique until further research is undertaken to identify exactly why the model failed to prdict bird numbers on this independent data set. -from Authors