Stand characteristics in colour-infrared aerial photographs as indicators of epiphytic lichens
Author
Summary, in English
Information about forest biodiversity has so far been collected mostly by using field inventories, but it is desirable to find other methods that can cover large areas at a lower cost. In a forest landscape covering 2000 ha in southern Sweden we tested if colour-infrared (CIR) aerial photographs on the scale of 1:30000 can be used to interpret forest stand characteristics correlated to the occurrence of epiphytic lichens that are Red-listed or otherwise indicate high nature conservation value ('signal species'). Using logistic regression we found that the interpreted stand variables tree height and crown structure class were significantly correlated to the occurrence of Red-listed species. For signal species, the variables tree height, percentage of southern deciduous trees and crown structure class were significantly correlated to the occurrence. The logistic regression models successfully predicted a significantly higher probability to find Red-listed species in the stands that actually contained such species compared to stands without Red-listed species. The same was true for stands with signal species. We conclude that interpretation of CIR aerial photographs could be a useful method to find certain groups of epiphytic lichens in surveys covering large areas.
Department/s
Publishing year
2004
Language
English
Pages
529-542
Publication/Series
Biodiversity and Conservation
Volume
13
Issue
3
Links
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Ecology
Status
Published
Project
- SUFOR
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0960-3115