engleski

Using Corine Land Cover Habitat Database (CLC) for analysis of breeding bird habitat : case study of white storks (Ciconia ciconia) the from northern Croatia

The purpose of this study was to find out whether a set of habitat characteristics, derived from national Corine Land Cover (CLC) database of habitat types, can indicate the occurrence of white stork nests in a settlement. The analyses were performed for the settlements closer than 35 km distance from the Drava river (northern Croatia). Sixteen habitat characteristics were determined around 257 settlements occupied with white stork nests and 152 control sites without white stork nests within the same geographic region. We performed multivariate inspection of the data and a non-metric multidimensional preference analysis. The best variables for stork habitat selection were: distance to the nearest grassland habitat (p<0.0001), distance to the three nearest grassland habitats (p<0.0001), altitude of the settlement above the sea level (p<0.001), sum of distances to the three nearest agricultural mosaic habitats (p<0.005) and standardized area proportion of forests (p<0.05). The explanatory capacity of the model was 81.1%. We conclude that it is possible to define a small number of habitat characteristics, derived from CLC database which can indicate the occurrence of white stork nests.

habitat; farmland; white stork; nest; biplot; logistic regression

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