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SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS OF FAUNA IN WESTERN GHATS (PDF)
T V Ramachandra, Minsa M and Bharath S
Energy and Wetlands Research Group,
Centre for Ecological Sciences,
Indian Institute of Science - 560012
5. Materials and Methods
Literatures were reviewed and data was compiled covering select fauna - Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals (Fig. 5.1). Data mining was done from online portals Science Direct (http://sciencedirect.com) and from Google Scholar (https://www.scholar.google.com/). The authenticity of the articles was reviewed before taking the information such as checking a number of citations, journal impact factor, etc. Some of the prime publications, checklists and management plans of protected areas are also collected from authentic sources such as regulatory agencies’s reports. Location details including the geographical coordinates of species sightings were collected from the reviewed articles itself. Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) was used to find out the geographical coordinates of species occurrence locations. Other relevant information such as conservation status, endemism, legal protection, habitat details and taxonomical details of each species were collected from IUCN Red List (http://www.iucnredlist.org), ENVIS Sahyadri: Western Ghats Biodiversity Information System and India Biodiversity Portal (http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/biodiversity).
According to the retrieved data, the database was created for each group (Table. 5.1). Location details of species sightings, scientific name, and common names in English, Hindi, Kannada languages, conservation status, endemism, legal protection details, Habitat preference and taxonomical details of each species were included in the database. Manuscript details of the literature from which the species details were retrieved also included in the database. It includes the article name, authors name and year of publication. GIS analysis was used to create distribution maps. This was performed in Q-GIS 2.16.3. To understand the distribution of various species in Western Ghats region, distribution ranges of each species group were overlaid with the shape file of Western Ghats Boundary. Querying function is implemented to retrieve data from each file. Querying includes displaying based on respective species name, family name, conservation status, and endemism. Distribution maps for various groups were created according to the families present in each group. Spatial overlay of Western Ghats boundary and conservation status of each group was done to estimate the distribution of species according to IUCN conservation in the Western Ghats region. Extinct, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, least concern, data deficient and not evaluated are the categories included in the conservation status. Similarly, spatial overlap of Western Ghats boundary and species which are endemic to Western Ghats from each group were done to estimate the distribution of endemic species in Western Ghats.
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