Predicting bird species presence in urban areas with NDVI: an assessment within and between cities

LEVEAU LUCAS; ISLA FEDERICO

URBAN FORESTRY & URBAN GREENING

ELSEVIER GMBH

Año: 2021 vol. 63

1618-8667

The increasing urbanization within cities correlates with the loss of green cover,affecting the occurrence of bird species. Therefore, to conserve bird diversity in urbanareas and foresee possible effects induced by green cover loss, it is essential to havespatial data of species occurrence. Remote sensors produce spatial explicit data aboutgreen cover, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which canbe used to model bird species occurrence within and between cities. The objectives ofthis study were: 1) to construct and evaluate predictive models between NDVI and birdspecies occurrence in Mar del Plata city, Argentina; and 2) to extrapolate these modelsto two other cities of the region, Balcarce and Miramar. Most of the 22 speciesanalyzed showed positive associations with NDVI. However, the minimum NDVI valuesat which species started to be present were dissimilar, showing different habitatrequirements between species. The models of nine species had r-squared values ≥0.40, and eight of these species showed an adequate prediction of occurrence inadditional areas of Mar del Plata. However, only the occurrence of the TropicalKingbird ( Tyrannus melancholicus ) was adequately extrapolated to Miramar andBalcarce. Our results showed that NDVI is successful to predict bird speciesoccurrence within a city, but the extrapolation to other cities can be inadequate. Thus,bird-habitat suitabilities for urban species are considered to be specific for each city.