Modelling forest bird community richness using CORINE land cover data: a study at the landscape scale in Hungary

Abstract

In this study we (1) examined the applicability of the widely available CORINE land cover map of Europe in predicting several components of the richness of forest breeding bird community, and (2) analysed how different ecologically meaningful species groups respond to the differences in landscape composition and how these differences are reflected in the relationships between total species richness and richness of these species groups at the 2.5 × 2.5 km2 scale. We found that landscape composition had only moderate success in predicting the richness components of the forest bird community. The predictive power of the applied general linear models differed very much: roughly 60% of the observed variance was explained when the dependent variables (species richness and abundance) were calculated using data of all the 21 studied forest bird species or that of common forest birds. However, species richness and abundance of groups of more vulnerable species were predicted with much less success (30% variance ex...