Abstract

Visualizing and mapping spatial changes in avian diversity patterns
Track: Conservation
Authors: Jennifer Rechel, Tait Rounsaville

Avian diversity represents important biological data that contributes to regional biodiversity conservation. An effective approach to characterize these diversity patterns, that are spatial in nature, is to visualize their habitat conditions on the landscape. Avian diversity patterns change over time in response to disturbed habitat conditions resulting from climate change, floods, wildfires, and fire management activities such as forest thinning and prescribed burns. Field data from 16 years (1997 - 2012) of bird observations in the San Jacinto and San Gabriel Mountains in southern California were used in conjunction with Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst to explore changes in species abundance, richness, and diversity. Relief maps were used to visualize relationships among map features and bird observations along an elevation gradient to explore temporal and spatial trends in diversity and distribution patterns. Differences in diversity patterns were more easily detected by visually comparing the data in 2D and 3D displays.