Multiscale Habitat Suitability Index Models for Priority Landbirds in the Central Hardwoods and West Gulf Coastal Plain/Ouachitas Bird Conservation Regions

Download or read book Multiscale Habitat Suitability Index Models for Priority Landbirds in the Central Hardwoods and West Gulf Coastal Plain/Ouachitas Bird Conservation Regions written by U. S. Department U.S. Department of Agriculture and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-01-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecoregional conservation planning for priority landbirds requires methods that explicitly link populations to habitat conditions at multiple scales. We developed Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) models to assess habitat quality for 40 priority bird species in the Central Hardwoods and West Gulf Coastal Plain/Ouachitas Bird Conservation Regions. The models incorporated both site and landscape environmental variables derived from one of six nationally consistent datasets: ecological subsections from the National Ecological Unit Hierarchy, National Land Cover Dataset, National Elevation Dataset, National Hydrography Dataset, State Soil Geographic Database, and Forest Inventory and Analysis data.