Factor analysis of the urban habitats classification on the example of the Sverdlovsk district of Irkutsk city

Martynova Anastasiya Eduardovna¹, Solodyankina Svetlana Viktorovna^{2, 1}

¹ Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia

² The V.B. Sochava Institute of Geography of Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia

Abstract:

The habitats typification was made using the European Habitat Classification System EUNIS (European Nature Information System) for the Sverdlovsk District of the city of Irkutsk. The object of study is divided into 676 plots with QGIS software. Geobotanical descriptions were carried out for some of them. Six parameters were determined which influence to the configuration and the functioning of habitats: 1) the presence of urban greening (the ratio of the area with vegetation cover to the total area of the plot); 2) paving (the ratio of the area of artificial surfaces to the total area of the plot); 3) soil outcrops (the ratio of the area of barrens to the total area of the plot); 4) the presence of surface water (the ratio of the area of water bodies to the total area of the plot); 5) location heights and 6) slope steepness obtained for each section according to SRTM data. Analysis of the data by the principal component method showed that the greatest influence on the determination of the EUNIS habitat type of the first hierarchical level is exerted by the parameters of greenery, paving (the first main component) and slope (the second component). Evaluation of the results of classification by the method of the discriminant analysis showed that it is 51.5% attributable to these variables, and the rest is described by other factors.

Keywords:

Habitats, remote sensing, discriminant analysis, environmental factors, statistical methods, geographical information systems, habitat typification, typification parameters, EUNIS, SRTM, remote sensing data.