A Resource-Based Modelling Framework to Assess Habitat Suitability for Steppe Birds in Semiarid Mediterranean Agricultural Systems

Abstract

European agriculture is undergoing widespread changes that are likely to have profound impacts on farmland biodiversity. The development of tools that allow an assessment of the potential biodiversity effects of different land-use alternatives before changes occur is fundamental to guiding management decisions. In this study, we develop a resource-based model framework to estimate habitat suitability for target species, according to simple information on species’ key resource requirements (diet, foraging habitat and nesting site), and examine whether it can be used to link land-use and local species’ distribution. We take as a study case four steppe bird species in a lowland area of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula. We also compare the performance of our resource-based approach to that obtained through habitat-based models relating species’ occurrence and land-cover variables. Further, we use our resource-based approach to predict the effects that change in farming systems can have on farmland bird habitat suitability and compare these predictions with those obtained using the habitat-based models. Habitat suitability estimates generated by our resource-based models performed similarly (and better for one study species) than habitat based-models when predicting current species distribution. Moderate prediction success was achieved for three out of four species considered by resource-based models and for two of four by habitat-based models. Although, there is potential for improving the performance of resource-based models, they provide a structure for using available knowledge of the functional links between agricultural practices, provision of key resources and the response of organisms to predict potential effects of changing land-uses in a variety of context or the impacts of changes such as altered management practices that are not easily incorporated into habitat-based models.

Rural Districts between Urbanization and Land Abandonment: Undermining Long-Term Changes in Mediterranean Landscapes

“…Evaluating the possible effects of different land-use alternatives on biodiversity is essential for guiding objective management choices [102][103][104]. The present study discovered landscape change paths in Greece and their possible impact on landscape diversity using spatial analysis and multivariate statistical models.…”

Conservation Traps and Long‐Term Species Persistence in Human‐Dominated Systems

“…Moving toward approximations that look more into the future, scanning, and forecasting potential alternative solutions and their implications on the long‐term, may provide a new perspective to improve our capability to avoid costly conservation traps (Sutherland & Woodroof ; Cardador et al . ; Cook et al . ).…”

“…Moving toward approximations that look more into the future, scanning, and forecasting potential alternative solutions and their implications on the long-term, may provide a new perspective to improve our capability to avoid costly conservation traps (Sutherland & Woodroof 2009;Cardador et al 2014;Cook et al 2014). This would help identifying opportunities for creating transitions from present situations threatening biodiversity, to new nonthreatening states.…”

Tools for exploring habitat suitability for steppe birds under land use change scenarios

“…We used a resource-based modelling approach to estimate habitat suitability for each species in a given land-use using a modified version of a resource-based modelling framework previously developed in the study area (Cardador et al, 2014). Resource-based modelling follows three steps: (1) the construction of a matrix to describe species' resource requirements (i.e.…”

“…We built resource requirement matrices for diet, foraging and nesting habitat requirements during the breeding season for the study species by gathering bibliographic data from published papers and reports (Cardador et al, 2014). For foraging and nesting habitat description, four vegetation height categories (0-25 cm, 25-50 cm, 50-100 cm, >100 cm) were defined according to available information.…”