Fuller, R.M., Devereux, B., Gillings, S., Amable, G.S. & Hill, R.A. 2005. Indices of bird-habitat preference from field surveys of birds and remote sensing of land cover: a study of south-eastern England with wider implications for conservation and biodiversity assessment. Global Ecology and Biogeography 14: 223-239.

Abstract

Land cover maps from remote sensing provide an effective way to link birds to habitats and vice versa. Thus, generalized habitat maps might be used to extrapolate localized or sample-based bird observations or the results of autecological studies, helping to predict and understand bird distributions in the wider countryside. The weak links between farmland birds and farmland habitats in a region dominated by farming, suggests that reasons for the decline in farmland birds may be deep seated and thus hard to reverse. The procedures described are repeatable elsewhere and applicable more generally to evaluate landscapes and biodiversity. It is suggested that remote sensing could rarely be bettered as a means of assessing habitats, comprehensively, over wide areas, in most parts of the world .

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