The impact of landscape structure on occurrence of White Stork's nests. - C. Latus, K. Kujawa. - Berkut. 8 (2). 1999. P. 150-154.
The objective of the study was to determine the landscape structure indices influencing the occurrence of White Stork's (Ciconia ciconia) nests. The analyses were performed for the MOL-district (660 km2) in East Ger-many (Oder valley) where the density of breeding pairs as high as to 4 per 100 km2. White Stork habitat preferences were determined by investigating landscape structure within a 1 km radius of nesting locations, 'breeding sites' (N = 56), within and for 'control sites' (N = 34), randomly s elected points in the villages without stork's nests. The land-scape structure (habitat proportions, Shannon's diversity index H', density of edges, etc.) was measured by evaluating aerial photographs (1:10000). Breeding sites were characterised by a hi gher proportion of grasslands and inshore waters as well as by a significantly higher (P < 0,01) value of H' 1,37 compared to 0,95 for 'control sites'. Storks clearly preferred more differentiated landscapes - 80 % of 'breeding sites' were localised in v ery high diversity classes (0,81-1,70), while 80 % of 'control sites' were in much lower diversity classes (0,21-0,80). Also grasslands were found to have a strong influence. Storks preferred contiguous and moderately fragmented grasslands as nesting hab itats. [English].
Key words: White Stork, East Germany, habitat preference, landscape structure.
Address: Claudia Latus, ZALF, Institute of land-use systems and landscape ecology, Eberswalderstr. 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany. e-mail: clatus@zalf.de.
Krzysztof Kujawa, Research Center for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Field Station, Szkolna 4, 64-003 Turew, Poland. e-mail: ortolan@priv7.onet.pl.