Ornithology Commons^™

Predicting Nesting Habitat Of Northern Goshawks In Mixed Aspen-Lodgepole Pine Forests In A High-Elevation Shrub-Steppe Dominated Landscape., Robert A. Miller, Jay D. Carlisle, Marc J. Bechard, Dena Santini

Robert Miller

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: …