PDFDOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/vzoo-2014-0064
Using hierarchical cluster analysis there were distinguished six spatial patterns of bird communities during the breeding season in the Lower Dnieper Sands. The differentiation of these patterns is based on a spatial heterogeneity in the area ratio of diff erent habitats. The sites with natural and sub-natural landscapes hold three types of bird communities. Another type of the bird community is relatively similar to the previous three, but characterized by a poor quantitative and qualitative bird composition; it is associated with open landscapes with destroyed natural vegetation. Bird communities of artifi cial pine plantations (the most transformed landscapes of the Lower Dnieper Sands) are very diff erent from those in the natural and sub-natural landscapes. Th e spectra of ecological groups of diff erent bird communities match the spectra of diff erent habitat types obtained using a supervised classifi cation of remote sensing data. It makes it possible to use a topological model of the habitat types (based on remote sensing data) as a predictor for GIS modelling of spatial distribution of diff erent birds communities throughout the Lower Dnieper Sands.