Canadian Forest Service Publications

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Abstract

ABSTRACT. The management of forest ecosystems for sustainability requires knowledge of the abundance and distribution of all resources, including wood and wildlife, and the ability to predict the impact of management on these resources. Spatially explicit inventories for wildlife are lacking for the vast majority of species. We propose, with example, a method of rapid habitat assessment which can be conducted with available data to oroduce a soatiall-v exo.licit inventory of habitat for a species. ~nformationf rom tie literature and some census data were used to construct a simole model of ootential habitat for a boreal forest songbird. Available Hpatial data, ihcluding landcover from Landsat TM data, and a digital elevation model, were used to map the distribution of key habitat characteristics onto the landscape. We argue for the development of these preliminary wildlife habitat models using habitat characteristics that are mappable with currently available remotely sensed data. Given the current trend toward the development of large scale databases of topography models can be efficiently and inexpensively developed to provide a framework for incorporating wildlife habitat into forest management. The relationships between rapid habitat assessment, long-term studies, monitoring, and population viability analysis are discussed.