Search

This paper discusses the application of the Cross-Correlation Analysis (CCA) technique to multi-spatial resolution Earth Observation (EO) data for detecting and quantifying changes in forest ecosystems in two different protected areas, located in Southern Italy and Southern India. The input data for CCA investigation were elaborated from the forest layer extracted from an existing Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) map (time T1) and a more recent (T2, with T2 > T1) single date image. The latter consist of a High Resolution (HR) Landsat 8 OLI image and a Very High Resolution (VHR) Worldview-2 image, which were analysed separately. For the Italian site, the forest layer (1:5000) was first compared to the HR Landsat 8 OLI image and then to the VHR Worldview-2 image. For the Indian site, the forest layer (1:50,000) was compared to the Landsat 8 OLI image then the changes were interpreted using Worldview-2. The changes detected through CCA, at HR only, were compared against those detected by applying a traditional NDVI image differencing technique of two Landsat scenes at T1 and T2. The accuracy assessment, concerning the change maps of the multi-spatial resolution outputs, was based on stratified random sampling. The CCA technique allowed an increase in the value of the overall accuracy: from 52% to 68% for the Italian site and from 63% to 82% for the Indian site. In addition, a significant reduction of the error affecting the stratified changed area estimation for both sites was obtained. For the Italian site, the error reduction became significant at VHR (±2 ha) in respect to HR (±32 ha) even though both techniques had comparable overall accuracy (82%) and stratified changed area estimation. The findings obtained support the conclusions that CCA technique can be a useful tool to detect and quantify changes in forest areas due to both legal and illegal interventions, including relatively inaccessible sites (e.g., tropical forest) with costs remaining rather low. The data obtained through CCA intervention could not only support the commitments undertaken by the European Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) but also satisfy UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmland habitats host important populations of several threatened bird species. So far, how to reconcile farmland management with the maintenance of viable populations of these taxa is a major challenge for conservation biology. Southeastern Italy hosts ca 7000 pairs of breeding lesser kestrels Falco naumanni, representing one of the European strongholds of this small colonial raptor of conservation concern. We firstly assessed the relative importance of managed crops versus seminatural grasslands in determining the local abundance of lesser kestrels at the landscape scale, and we successively studied the foraging habitat preferences at a smaller spatial scale. Surveys of foraging birds were associated with land-use collection at 191 homogeneous habitat sampling parcels from 14 plots of 16 km2 each, uniformly distributed over a 2400 km2 area. Each plot was visited six times during the 2017 breeding season (May-July). Land-use markedly changed along the season, unripe cereals being dominant in May, while harvested cereal crops prevailed in July. Land-use did not affect lesser kestrel distribution early in the season while foraging birds were more abundant in plots with a greater proportion of harvested cereal crops and a lower one of semi-natural grassland in the late breeding season. In accordance, the analysis of foraging habitat preferences within plots showed that in May unripe cereal crops and semi-natural grasslands were used proportionally to their availability. In June and July, harvested cereal crops were used more than expected from their availability, while semi-natural grasslands were significantly avoided. Our landscape-scale analysis thus indicates that semi-natural grasslands are much less used in comparison to harvested crops during the mid and late parts of the breeding season, suggesting that lesser kestrel may be able to take advantage of crop management practices more than other farmland birds of conservation priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]