Habitat assessment and species niche modeling

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of classic habitat assessment techniques, how such studies can be carried out on various budgets, and with a range of equipment from traditional to modern. It also addresses the important issue of how to decide where to look for these elusive species, and whether it is always worth going to the field at all through a discussion of the merits of species niche modelling (SNM) — computer-based models that predict potential species distributions, futures, and fates from existing distribution and habitat data. These models hold considerable promise and how they can be used with field data to enhance species research and conservation is discussed.

Ecology and conservation of the endemic Bawean warty pig Sus verrucosus blouchi and Bawean deer Axis kuhlii

“…At each camera trap location we recorded the latitude and longitude (with a global positioning system), altitude and habitat variables. These included the major habitat type (rice cultivation: n = 18; garden cultivation: n = 7; shrubland and degraded forest: n = 7; teak plantation: n = 10; tall forest: n = 76; community forest: n = 8; for definitions see Rademaker et al, 2016), mean tree diameter at breast height, mean tree height in a 10 × 10 m plot around the camera-trap location, and tree density using the T-square method (Rode et al, 2013) with two sample points (for details see Rademaker et al, 2016). We calculated the mean litter depth in four 1 × 1 m subplots in the corners of the plot.…”