ANIMAL HABITAT QUALITY AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING: EXPLORING SEASONAL PATTERNS USING NDVI

By T. Wiegand, J. Naves, Martín F. Garbulsky, Néstor Fernández. 2008

105 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many animal species have developed specific evolutionary adaptations to survive prolonged periods of low energy availability that characterize seasonal environments. The seasonal course of primary production, a major aspect of ecosystem functioning, should therefore be an important factor determining the habitat quality of such species. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing the relationship between habitat quality and ecosystem functioning for brown bears (Ursus arctos), a species showing hyperphagia and hibernation as evolutionary adaptation to seasonal peaks and bottlenecks in ecosystem productivity, respectively. Our unique long-term data set comprised data from two brown bear populations in northern Spain on historical presence, current presence, and reproduction. The data were classified on a grid of 5 3 5 km pixels into five classes: frequent reproduction, sporadic reproduction, frequent presence, sporadic presence, and recent extinction. We used the long- term average of the seasonal course of NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) as a proxy for ecosystem functioning and investigated the relationship between habitat quality and ecosystem functioning with methods borrowed from statistical point-pattern analysis. We found that brown bears indeed selected habitat with specific ecosystem functioning (i.e., the variance in all habitat classes was smaller than in the landscape overall) and the relationship between habitat quality and ecosystem functioning was ordered. First, the average distance in ecosystem functioning between two habitat classes was larger if the difference in habitat quality was larger. Second, habitat for which there was the greatest need (i.e., breeding habitat) occupied the narrowest niche regarding ecosystem functioning and showed the most pronounced seasonality. Progressively poorer classes occupied wider niches that partly overlapped those of better classes. This indicated that nonbreeding animals are less selective. Our methodology provided new insight into the relationship between ecosystem functioning and habitat quality and could be widely applied to animal species living in seasonal environments. Because NDVI data are continuously collected, our methodology allows for continuous monitoring of changes in habitat quality due to global change.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1e1cc40b006a2253d402bf597475ab397b9d656b

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Citations in the corpus

Tree height prediction approaches for uneven-aged beech forests in northwestern Spain (2013, background): “, 2006) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) (Wiegand et al., 2008), which has led to their inclusion in protected areas that are relatively unaffected by human influence.”
Dynamic wildlife habitat models: Seasonal foods and mortality risk predict occupancy-abundance and habitat selection in grizzly bears (2010, methodology): “and reproduction or growth (food resource abundance) to ensure relations to population processes, most models are based on readily available surrogates of habitat such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (Wiegand et al., 2008) or cover types (Schlossberg and King, 2009).”
Habitat suitability modelling of an invasive plant with advanced remote sensing data (2009, background): “…Cablk et al., 2002; McPherson et al., 2004; Parra et al., 2004; Roura-Pascual et al., 2006; Peterson & Nakazawa, 2008; Prates-Clark et al., 2008; Wiegand et al., 2008), biomass (Edwards et al., 2006), net primary production (Meynard & Quinn, 2007), vegetation moisture and leaf/wood density…”
The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI): unforeseen successes in animal ecology (2011, background): “…relationship between NDVI and animal distribution has been recently explored for carnivorous and omnivorous animals (see also Table 2), with e.g. Wiegand et al. (2008) reporting that brown bears Ursus arctos selected areas with specific NDVI characteristics, or Basille et al. (2009)…”
Spring Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) predicts annual variation in timing of peak faecal crude protein in mountain ungulates (2009, background): “2006), habitat use and herbivore distribution (Gustine et al. 2006; Marshal et al. 2006; Wiegand et al. 2008).”
Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as a predictor of forage availability for ungulates in forest and field habitats (2013, result): “…has been directly and indirectly confirmed by various studies, e.g. on European bison (Bison bonasus; Mysterud et al. 2007), bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis; Portier et al. 1998), mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus; Côté and Festa-Bianchet 2001) and brown bear (Ursus arctos, Wiegand et al. 2008).”