Resource selection by Sarda cattle in a Mediterranean silvopastoral system.

ABSTRACT: Knowledge of how grazing cattle utilize heterogeneous landscapes in Mediterranean silvopastoral areas is scarce. Global positioning systems (GPS) to track animals, together with geographic information systems (GIS), can relate animal distribution to landscape features. With the aim to develop a general spatial model that provides accurate prediction of cattle resource selection patterns within a Mediterranean mountainous silvopastoral area, free-roaming Sarda cows were fitted with GPS collars to track their spatial behaviors. Resource selection function models (RSF) were developed to estimate the probability of resource use as a function of environmental variables. A set of over 500 candidate RSF models, composed of up to five environmental predictor variables, were fitted to data. To iden

SUBMITTER: Acciaro M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10954795 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature