Im Institutional Repository finden Sie die Publikationen der Agroscope-Forschenden. Wenn das PDF der Publikation frei verfügbar ist, kann es heruntergeladen werden. Ist dies nicht der Fall, können Sie anhand des Publikationshinweises sehen, wo die Veröffentlichung erfolgte.
Durch Eingabe des Webcodes kann direkt auf eine Publikation zugegriffen werden.
Der Webcode wird bei Agroscope-Publikationen auf der Detailseite einer Publikation ganz unten angezeigt: Publikations-ID (Webcode): 12345
Durch Eingabe eines Suchbegriffes kann in den Metadaten zu einer Publikation gesucht werden: Titel, Untertitel, Zusammenfassung, Quellenname, ISBN, ISSN, DOI, Keywords
Mit der Volltextsuche wird der Inhalt der PDFs durchsucht; Hinweise zur Suche.
European grasslands face strong declines in extent and quality. Many grassland types are priority habitats for national and European conservation strategies. Countrywide, high spatial resolution maps of their distribution are often lacking. Here, we modelled the spatial distribution of 20 permanent grassland habitats at the level of phytosociological alliances across Switzerland at 10x10 m resolution. First, we applied ensemble models to provide distribution maps of the individual habitat types, using training data from various sources. Copernicus Sentinel satellite imagery and variables describing climate, soil and topography were used as predictors. The performance of these models was assessed based on the true skill statistics with a split-sampling of the data. Second, the individual maps were combined into countrywide maps of the most and second most likely habitat type, respectively, using an expert-based weighting approach. The performance of the combined map for the most likely habitat type was assessed via an independent testing dataset and a comparison of the predicted habitat-type proportions with extrapolations from field surveys. Most individual maps had useful to excellent predictive performance (TSS ≥ 0.6). For most grid cells in the combined maps, the most and second most likely habitat types were either ecologically closely related or representing two grassland types along a nutrient gradient. The same was true for omission errors. We found good agreement between the predicted and estimated proportions from field surveys. The area of raised bogs appears to be underestimated, while dry grasslands showed highest agreement. This work highlights the potential of earth observation data at fine spatial and temporal resolution to map habitats at broad scales, thereby providing the foundation for diverse conservation applications. A particular challenge remains in capturing the transition from nutrient-poor to nutrient-rich grasslands, which is highly important for biodiversity conservation.
