Relationships between the richness of bird species and structural diversity from satellite images of Landsat-8 OLI

• Main Authors: Ahmet MERT, Şengül AKSAN, Ulaş ÖZKAN, İbrahim ÖZDEMİR
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Isparta University of Applied Sciences Faculty of Forestry 2016-03-01
• Series: Turkish Journal of Forestry
• Subjects: -; kuş türü zenginliği; uydu görüntüsü; biyolojik çeşitlilik
• Online Access: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/tjf/issue/20906/224598?publisher=iubu

Preparation of the base maps in conserving biodiversity gain importance gradually in forest inventory. Such maps are needed to either in arrangement of forest management maps, or in managing other semi-natural ecosystems. Biodiversity maps can be prepared particularly based on the variables to be easily measured such as forest structural diversity and bird species richness. Preparation of these maps for large geographic areas using field measurements and observations is difficult, costly, and time consuming. The potential of satellite data has been intensively investigated on this subject. The aim of this study is to determine the relations between bird species richness and the landscape diversity calculated based on Landsat-8 OLI data and image segmentation. The results showed that there is a statistically important relation between bird species richness and landscape diversity (r=0,58 and p<0,01). This study suggests that Landsat-8 OLI data has a great potential in modelling and mapping bird species richness. However, using satellite data alone for an accurate mapping may be insufficient. Estimation accuracy can be improved by integrating other environmental variables and features extracted from satellite data. For this purpose, to repeat this study is considered very important in larger geographic regions using more bird observation plots and sophisticated modelling methods.