Predicting Occurrence, Abundance, and Fruiting of a Cultural Keystone Species to Inform Landscape Values and Priority Sites for Habitat Enhancements

Scott E Nielsen,Jacqueline M Dennett,Christopher W Bater

doi:10.3390/f11070783

Abstract

Environmental niche modeling is an increasingly common tool in conservation and management of non-timber species. In particular, models of species’ habitats have been aided by new advances in remote sensing and it is now possible to relate forest structure variables to understory species at a relatively high resolution over large spatial scales. Here, we model landscape responses for a culturally-valued keystone shrub, velvet-leaf blueberry (Vaccinium myrtilloides Michaux), in northeast Alberta, Canada, to better understand the environmental factors promoting or limiting its occurrence, abundance, and fruit production, and to guide regional planning. Occurrence and abundance were measured at 845 and 335 sites, respectively, with both strongly related to land cover type and topo-edaphic factors. However, their influence varied widely, reflecting differences in the processes affecting occurrence and abundance. We then used airborne laser scanning (ALS) to characterize horizontal forest canopy cover for the study area, and related this and other geospatial variables to patterns in fruit production where we demonstrated a five-fold increase in fruit production from closed to open forest stands. We then simulated forest canopy thinning across the study area to identify places where gains in fruit production would be greatest following natural disturbance or directed management (e.g., thinning, prescribed burning). Finally, we suggest this approach could be used to identify sites for habitat enhancements to offset direct (land use change) or indirect (access) losses of resources in areas impacted with resource extraction activities, or simply to increase a culturally-valued resource through management.

Highlights

Species distribution and abundance models are vital to guiding management and conservation.These niche models are reliant upon remote sensing and other geospatial products, which are constantly being refined by advances in sensors and analytical approaches, for applications in land and wildlife management [1,2,3]
We used a fractional logistic regression approach to model velvet-leaf blueberry occurrence, abundance, and fruit production in northeast Alberta, Canada, at high spatial resolution using a suite of remote sensing and other geospatial data
Our study included airborne laser scanning (ALS) forest canopy structure data, the application of which we strongly encourage in future studies of understory species, especially fruiting shrubs

Summary

Introduction

Species distribution and abundance models are vital to guiding management and conservation. These niche models are reliant upon remote sensing and other geospatial products, which are constantly being refined by advances in sensors and analytical approaches, for applications in land and wildlife management [1,2,3]. Of the suite of common understory species, the availability of fruiting shrubs is vital to both wildlife and humans [14,15]. Mapping their distribution and abundance can inform land use and forest management [16,17,18]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion