Scale and Landscape Features Matter for Understanding Waterbird Habitat Selection

Yang Zhang,Keming Ma,Jinya Li,Wanquan Deng,Fawen Qian,Lina Zhao

doi:10.3390/rs13214397

Abstract

Clarifying species-environment relationships is crucial for the development of efficient conservation and restoration strategies. However, this work is often complicated by a lack of detailed information on species distribution and habitat features and tends to ignore the impact of scale and landscape features. Here, we tracked 11 Oriental White Storks (Ciconia boyciana) with GPS loggers during their wintering period at Poyang Lake and divided the tracking data into two parts (foraging and roosting states) according to the distribution of activity over the course of a day. Then, a three-step multiscale and multistate approach was employed to model habitat selection characteristics: (1) first, we minimized the search range of the scale for these two states based on daily movement characteristics; (2) second, we identified the optimized scale of each candidate variable; and (3) third, we fit a multiscale, multivariable habitat selection model in relation to natural features, human disturbance and especially landscape composition and configuration. Our findings reveal that habitat selection of the storks varied with spatial scale and that these scaling relationships were not consistent across different habitat requirements (foraging or roosting) and environmental features. Landscape configuration was a more powerful predictor for storks’ foraging habitat selection, while roosting was more sensitive to landscape composition. Incorporating high-precision spatiotemporal satellite tracking data and landscape features derived from satellite images from the same periods into a multiscale habitat selection model can greatly improve the understanding of species-environmental relationships and guide efficient recovery planning and legislation.

Highlights

Identifying habitat features for crucial life-history phases is more critical than ever since habitat loss and degradation are the primary drivers of species imperilment and extinction, especially when habitats are exposed to disturbance from climatic and anthropogenic modification [1,2]
This work is often complicated by the lack of detailed information on species distribution and habitat features [8]
Scale of Effect variance), we found that the four factors that had the greatest influence on the foraging enviro-anthropogenic at their best-performing sca of the Combining storks fell into exactly four different variables categories,measured while the most influential factor in multivariate and multiscale modelswas has the been proven to accurate and realist affecting the habitat selection for roosting percentage of be themore landscape covered by marsh, i.e., a landscape composition variable (Figure 3)

Summary

Introduction

Identifying habitat features for crucial life-history phases is more critical than ever since habitat loss and degradation are the primary drivers of species imperilment and extinction, especially when habitats are exposed to disturbance from climatic and anthropogenic modification [1,2]. Many species rely on different resources throughout the day, across seasons, or during different life cycle stages [3]. Species distribution models (SDMs), which provide information on the relationships between species distributions and the surrounding environments, is among the most important first steps in guiding imperiled species recovery planning and legislation [4,5,6,7]. This work is often complicated by the lack of detailed information on species distribution and habitat features [8]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion