Mapping and characterizing animals’ places of interest in forest environment

Abstract

Abstract. Fauna impacts its environment as well as spatial environment influences fauna space use. Forest management implies taking into account pressure from animals in fragile-balanced patches. Our goal is to propose maps that would benefit forest planning by reflecting individual movement and space use depending on the animal species and local spatiotemporal environment. The study case focuses on two species, roe deer and red deer, and on a forested site in the northeast of France. Movements of several individuals were analysed from collected GPS locations. Foraging places likely to correspond to intense research behaviour were computed using the First-Passage Time method. These places were assumed as being of interest and were characterized with landscape features and temporal information. Maps were produced to synthetize information about foraging places by defining adapted symbolizations. Then maps about functional space were proposed based on extrapolation of favourable or avoided areas from the characterized observed foraging places and space use. Landscape patches were mapped according to a gradient of potential interest by animals’ species, in order to highlight needs of specific planning actions in the forestry context. Map displays were driven by forestry end-use and designed so that to be compliant to a numeric geographical portal, giving access to different available on-line layers and computed created ones.