Satellite imagery can predict bird species occupancy and inform multispecies management in pine savannas

ABSTRACT Multispecies management can contribute to meeting growing challenges of preserving biodiversity, yet current game and threatened species management often focuses on individual species. Satellite imagery available at high spatial and temporal resolution provides a potential tool to overcome the challenge posed by multispecies management of linking patterns of habitat use among species. We sought to determine whether satellite imagery could be used to describe patterns of species occupancy and inform multispecies management in pine savannas in Georgia, USA. We conducted point-count surveys at 7 sites in 2022 for 3 bird species: Colinus virginianus (Northern Bobwhite), Dryobates borealis (Red-cockaded Woodpecker), and Peucaea aestivalis (Bachman’s Sparrow). We built single-season occupancy models comparing a set of models using covariates collected from field vegetation surveys and another set using covariates extracted from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. We then used a multi-objective optimization algorithm to identify quasi-optimal management solutions (i.e., sets of covariate values from top satellite imagery metric models). We found that models created using satellite imagery performed well at predicting occupancy of all 3 species as measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC > 0.8) and had higher AUC scores than field-derived habitat covariate-based models. We found combinations of metrics that could result in high rates of predicted probability of occupancy for all species (within 86% of highest possible occupancy probability), but these combinations did not exist at any of the sites. Our results demonstrate that (1) satellite imagery can allow users to build reliable occupancy models without intensive field-based vegetation surveys; and (2) C. virginianus, D. borealis, and P. aestivalis in pine savanna ecosystems could be simultaneously managed through more frequent burning, changes in canopy cover or by producing suitable heterogeneity of habitats after identifying an appropriate scale of management.