Importance of landscape features and earth Observation derived habitat maps for modelling amphibian distribution in the Alta Murgia National Park

Traditionally, analyses of relationships between amphibians and habitat focused on breeding environ-ments (i.e., pond features) more than on the features of the surrounding environment. Nevertheless,for most amphibians the terrestrial phase is longer than the aquatic phase, and consequently landscapefeatures (i.e., habitat mosaics) may have an important role for modelling amphibian distribution.There were different aims in this analysis. Firstly, we compared the effectiveness of the informationprovided by land cover/use (LC/LU) classes and habitat classes defined according to a new habitat tax-onomy named General Habitat Category (GHC), which is based on the concept of biological forms ofdominant vegetation and class naturalness. The GHC map used was obtained from a pre-existing val-idated LC/LU map, by integrating spectral and spatial measurements from very high resolution Earthobservation data according to ecological expert rules involving concepts related to spatial and temporalrelationships among LC/LU and habitat classes.Then, we investigated the importance for amphibians of the landscape surrounding ponds within theItalian Alta Murgia National Park. The work assessed whether LC/LU classes in pond surrounds are impor-tant for the presence/absence of amphibians in this area, and identified which classes are more importantfor amphibians. The results obtained can provide useful indications to management strategies aiming atthe conservation of amphibians within the study area. An information-theoretic approach was adoptedto assess whether GHC maps allow to improve the performance of species distribution models. We usedthe Akaike's Information Criterion (AICc) to compare the effectiveness of GHC categories versus LC/LUcategories in explaining the presence/absence of pool frogs. AICc weights suggest that GHC categoriescan better explain the distribution of frogs, compared to LC/LU classes.