Milutin Kovačević, Vladimir Marković, Igor Ponjiger, Zoran Ristić, Milosava Matejević, Rastislav Stojsavljević, Igor Stamenković
University of Novi Sad, Serbia
corresponding author’s e-mail:
Abstract
Recent researches have determined that vegetation is one of the essential factors for game habitat quality. Vegetation is important in the form of the following components: as a food supplier, as a shelter provider, as the creator and regulator of the micro-climate of the habitat, etc. Past practice has shown that the classical methods for evaluating habitat factors involve a lot of subjectivity and often lead to an unrealistic estimate of hunting ground capacity that can affect sustainable game management. Instead of the classical analyses, paper proposes assessment of this factor using Geographic Information Sys-tem (GIS). NDVI – normalized difference vegetation index is a graphical indicator that can be used to analyze images ob-tained by remote sensing and is used for these purposes. The researched area was hunting ground “Kapetanski rit” – Kanjiža, Serbia. In order to assess the vegetation factor, the analysis of satellite images is done for two periods of the year (May and December/January). In May the game prepares shelters for bringing an offspring and the period December/January is taken as part of the year when vegetation coverage is minimal due to winter and game is in need of additional food and shelter. Based on the results and maps, the user of the hunting ground can have a clearer view of the vegetation types and distribu-tion, hence assistance in planning and analyzing the territorial distribution of the game. Comparing classical methods for evaluating vegetation and the use of GIS for this purpose shows the advantages of new improved GIS methodology.
Keywords
habitat evaluation, vegetation, GIS, NDVI, hunting ground
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