Sensitivity table Habitat Quality

Hi, I’m calculating Habitat Quality for Portugal mainland and analysing the results specially in conservation areas using Corine Land Cover as my master thesis. In my first version I reduced the 42 classes into 11 megaclasses and used the values of sensitivity based on papers that used similar classes. For now, my advisor sugested me to use all the 42 classes and a problem is that I coudn’t find any paper where the methodolody was like that. So, the first question I have is: where I can find those values of sensitivity and also values for max distance and weight for threats (I am using as threats: croplands, urban areas, roads and railways); the second question is, what is the source of the values at the sensitivity table provided in the sample data? Thanks for your help!

Hi @brunoos -

Sorry that I can’t really help with the values for sensitivity, they generally come from a literature search or consulting with people who are knowledgeable about the species you’re modeling - have you looked around for other studies using Corine for this kind of analysis? If you reduced 42 classes into 11, is it possible to use the value for a reduced class and apply it to the multiple classes that went into it? I can see where this wouldn’t always work cleanly, but it’s an idea to get started, and you can fill in the others as you find more class-specific data.

For the sample sensitivity table, it was created a very long time ago, the location is in Oregon in the northwest U.S., and unfortunately we don’t have a record of the sources for those values, nor whether they are species-specific or more general habitat. It is possible that they were simply made up for testing purposes. So I do not recommend that you use them for your thesis work (unfortunately!)

I haven’t done much parameterizing with the HQ model, but perhaps others have who can chime in.

~ Stacie

Thanks for your help Stacie!