Impact of horizontal and vertical pattern of habitats on birds diversity

This diploma thesis follows up the influence of horizontal and vertical structure of biotopes on biodiversity of bird species of Czech Republic of forest and open sites. Vertical structure model was created from digital model of surface of Czech Republic (1st generation) and digital model of relief of Czech Republic (5th generation). Information about horizontal structure were derived by analyzing aerial imagery. Then single variables were detected from these data. Subsequently, it was analyzed which of these variables and which way influence bird diversity. On both types of sites was found increasing bird diversity with increasing diversity of vertical structure. With increasing horizontal structure, however, bird diversity significantly increased only on open sites. The influence of other characteristics was mostly different on bird diversity of open and forest sites, but, for both types of sites, the positive influence had for example edge density of land cover categories or edge density of height categories. Additional part of this thesis was to explore if vertical characteristics of biotopes could influence prediction of selected bird species. Results was different in forest and open biotopes, nevertheless in both types of sites was found potential use of both horizontal and vertical variables