Effects of vegetation and water seasonal variation on habitat use of herons (Aves, Ardeidae) in Tonga Lake (North-East Algeria)
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Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université de M'sila
Abstract
The present study was aimed to determine the effect of some
environmental factors such as water features and vegetation cover on the
distribution and habitat use of herons over different seasons of the bird’s life
(breeding, passage and wintering) in Tonga Lake (North East Algeria) from
March 2017 to February 2018. We used remote sensing techniques to study the
environmental factors variations, we adopted the normalized difference
vegetation index (NDVI) to give an estimate of vegetation cover and we used the
normalized difference water index (NDWI) to study the water features. In our
study, we determine that the abundance and richness of herons species is largely
influenced by the water features and vegetation cover. The seasonal variations
in the amount of these environmental factors are known to affect the availability
of various food items for herons. Eight species of herons were identified during
the study period. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient was used to examine the
effect of NDVI and NDWI on the distribution of herons. The results showed that
the NDVI was significantly positively correlated with richness and abundance of
herons respectively (r=0.728, p<0.05) (r=0.651, p<0.05), wherease the NDWI
was significantly negatively correlated with the richness and abundance of
herons (r=-0.65, p<0.05) (r=-0.69, p<0.05) respectively.
Description
Keywords
habitats, herons, NDVI, NDWI, Ramsar site