The role of remote sensing data in habitat suitability and connectivity modeling: insights from the cantabrian brown bear.

Ecological modeling requires sufficient spatial resolution and a careful selection of environmental variables to achieve good predictive performance. Although national and international administrations offer fine-scale environmental data, they usually have limited spatial coverage (country or continent). Alternatively, optical and radar satellite imagery is available with high resolutions, global coverage and frequent revisit intervals. Here, we compared the performance of ecological models trained with free satellite data with models fitted using regionally restricted spatial datasets. We developed brown bear habitat suitability and connectivity models from three datasets with different spatial coverage and accessibility. These datasets comprised (1) a Sentinel-1 and 2 land cover map (global coverage); (2) pan-European vegetation and land cover layers (continental coverage); and (3) LiDAR data and the Forest Map of Spain (national coverage). Results show that Sentinel imagery and pan-European datasets are powerful sources to estimate vegetation variables for habitat and connectivity modeling. However, Sentinel data could be limited for understanding precise habitat–species associations if the derived discrete variables do not distinguish a wide range of vegetation types. Therefore, more effort should be taken to improving the thematic resolution of satellite-derived vegetation variables. Our findings support the application of ecological modeling worldwide and can help select spatial datasets according to their coverage and resolution for habitat suitability and connectivity modeling.

Data and Resources

Cite as

Cisneros-Araujo P. Goicolea T. Mateo-Sánchez M.C. Garcia-Viñas J.I. Marchamalo M. Mercier A. y Gastón A. The role of remote sensing data in habitat suitability and connectivity modeling: insights from the cantabrian brown bear. MDPI, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13061138

Clipboard Icon
Retrieved: 18 Jan 2025 14:24:47
RIS BibTeX

Metadata
Download
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Basic information
Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-12-02
Date of last revision 2025-01-18
Show changelog
Metadata identifier f97e0139-5c7e-5580-aabf-31134ddb87df
Metadata language Spanish
Themes (NTI-RISP)
High-value dataset category
ISO 19115 topic category biota
Keyword URIs
Bibliographic information
Name of the dataset creator Cisneros-Araujo, P., Goicolea, T., Mateo-Sánchez, M.C., Garcia-Viñas, J.I., Marchamalo, M., Mercier, A. y Gastón, A.
Name of the dataset editor MDPI
Other identifier DOI: 10.3390/rs13061138
Identifier of the dataset creator
Email of the dataset creator
Website of the dataset creator
Provenance
Lineage statement
Metadata Standard
Version notes
Version