IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Alhambra Silva Arimoro, O. | |
| Use of geotechnologies applied in studies of occupancy and connectivity models for medium and larger mammals in Cerrado | |
| 2015 Full Book | |
Studies involving the planning wildlife conservation indicate that the simple act of creating and maintaining a physically protected area does not guarantee that the fauna and flora, as well as the ecological processes, are preserved. In this context, military areas represent an important element of any conservation strategy of the national biodiversity due to the presence of extensive undeveloped land areas, playing the role in managing natural resources. The survey of the fauna of terrestrial mammals of medium and larger size was carried out in an area of approximately 15.000 acres in the Army Instruction Camp through camera traps along a campaign of six months between August and February 2014/2015. 26 species were recorded whose community is constituted mostly by representatives of Carnivora order (42.30%) being eight endangered species. It is considered that the maintenance of diversity observed in the area is due to the large expanse of continuous native Cerrado vegetation on the Instruction Camp, combined with habitat heterogeneity and maintenance of original native vegetation conditions, despite the military activities in the area. Then, we used detection and non-detection data obtained by camera traps along with environmental variables to determine the occupancy probability of medium and larger mammalian species in a military area, emphasizing the importance of these areas to the persistence of mammals. The probability of occupancy was modelled for 16 species by using the single-season method. The results indicated that tree density and distance from de gallery forest were the determining covariates to the occupancy of most species, indicating the importance of maintaining the vegetation structure with natural habitats for mammalian conservation. Finally, landscape connectivity was evaluated with the application of two indices (integral index of connectivity and probability of connectivity) for two scenarios: without and with the road effects to four different dispersal distances. The analysis showed that without road effects on functional connectivity it had great potential occurring including the military area as an important remaining able to maintain connections inside and outside for different dispersal distances analyzed in this study The effect of the presence of roads generated a great impact in maintaining connectivity implying the need for mitigating measures that allow the shifting of fauna in the landscape. |
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