Predicting nesting habitat of Northern Goshawks in mixed aspen-lodgepole pine forests in a high-elevation shrub-steppe dominated landscape — Oak Academic Publishing
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Predicting nesting habitat of Northern Goshawks in mixed aspen-lodgepole pine forests in a high-elevation shrub-steppe dominated landscape
Idaho Bird Observatory, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
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Idaho Bird Observatory, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
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Raptor Research Center, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
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Minidoka Ranger District, Sawtooth National Forest, USDA Forest Service, Burley, USA
1 Idaho Bird Observatory, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
2 Idaho Bird Observatory, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
3 Raptor Research Center, Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, USA
4 Minidoka Ranger District, Sawtooth National Forest, USDA Forest Service, Burley, USA
We developed a habitat suitability model for predicting nest locations of breeding Northern Goshawks ( Accipiter gentilis ) in the high-elevation mixed forest and shrub-steppe habitat of south-central Idaho, USA. We used elevation, slope, aspect, ruggedness, distance-to-water, canopy cover, and individual bands of Landsat imagery as predictors for known nest locations with logistic regression. We found goshawks prefer to nest in gently-sloping, east-facing, non-rugged areas of dense aspen and lodgepole pine forests with low reflectance in green (0.53 - 0.61 μm) wavelengths during the breeding season. We used the model results to classify our 43,169 hectare study area into nesting suitability categories: well suited (8.8%), marginally suited (5.1%), and poorly suited (86.1%). We evaluated our model’s performance by comparing the modeled results to a set of GPS locations of known nests (n = 15) that were not used to develop the model. Observed nest locations matched model results 93.3% of the time for well suited habitat and fell within poorly suited areas only 6.7% of the time. Our method improves on goshawk nesting models developed previously by others and may be applicable for surveying goshawks in adjacent mountain ranges across the northern Great Basin.
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