Innovative Health Applications, IHA-300, Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899, USA.
Ecology. 2010 Nov;91(11):3354-64. doi: 10.1890/09-0964.1.
Many ecosystems are influenced by disturbances that create specific successional states and habitat structures that species need to persist. Estimating transition probabilities between habitat states and modeling the factors that influence such transitions have many applications for investigating and managing disturbance-prone ecosystems. We identify the correspondence between multistate capture-recapture models and Markov models of habitat dynamics. We exploit this correspondence by fitting and comparing competing models of different ecological covariates affecting habitat transition probabilities in Florida scrub and flatwoods, a habitat important to many unique plants and animals. We subdivided a large scrub and flatwoods ecosystem along central Florida's Atlantic coast into 10-ha grid cells, which approximated average territory size of the threatened Florida Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens), a management indicator species. We used 1.0-m resolution aerial imagery for 1994, 1999, and 2004 to classify grid cells into four habitat quality states that were directly related to Florida Scrub-Jay source-sink dynamics and management decision making. Results showed that static site features related to fire propagation (vegetation type, edges) and temporally varying disturbances (fires, mechanical cutting) best explained transition probabilities. Results indicated that much of the scrub and flatwoods ecosystem was resistant to moving from a degraded state to a desired state without mechanical cutting, an expensive restoration tool. We used habitat models parameterized with the estimated transition probabilities to investigate the consequences of alternative management scenarios on future habitat dynamics. We recommend this multistate modeling approach as being broadly applicable for studying ecosystem, land cover, or habitat dynamics. The approach provides maximum-likelihood estimates of transition parameters, including precision measures, and can be used to assess evidence among competing ecological models that describe system dynamics.
许多生态系统受到干扰的影响，这些干扰会产生特定的演替状态和栖息地结构，物种需要这些结构才能生存。估计栖息地状态之间的转移概率并对影响这些转移的因素进行建模，对于研究和管理易受干扰的生态系统有许多应用。我们确定了多状态捕获-再捕获模型和栖息地动态马尔可夫模型之间的对应关系。我们利用这种对应关系，通过拟合和比较不同生态协变量的竞争模型来影响佛罗里达州灌丛和草原的栖息地转移概率，灌丛和草原是许多独特的动植物的重要栖息地。我们沿着佛罗里达州大西洋海岸的中心将一个大型灌丛和草原生态系统划分为 10 公顷的网格单元，这近似于受威胁的佛罗里达州灌丛松鸦（Aphelocoma coerulescens）的平均领地大小，这是一种管理指示物种。我们使用 1.0 米分辨率的航空影像对 1994 年、1999 年和 2004 年的网格单元进行分类，将其分为四个与佛罗里达州灌丛松鸦源汇动态和管理决策直接相关的栖息地质量状态。结果表明，与火蔓延（植被类型、边缘）和随时间变化的干扰（火灾、机械切割）相关的静态站点特征最好地解释了转移概率。结果表明，在没有机械切割的情况下，大部分灌丛和草原生态系统都能抵抗从退化状态向理想状态的转变，而机械切割是一种昂贵的恢复工具。我们使用基于估计的转移概率参数化的栖息地模型来研究替代管理方案对未来栖息地动态的影响。我们建议使用这种多状态建模方法来广泛研究生态系统、土地覆盖或栖息地动态。该方法提供了转移参数的最大似然估计，包括精度度量，并可用于评估描述系统动态的竞争生态模型之间的证据。
