Figure 1.
The study area of 1,0232 (35°48′27N, 137°49′47E) including the central Japan Alps located between Ina and Kiso valley, the southern part of Nagano prefecture in the Honshu island of Japan.
The example section (bottom right) has a typical distribution of the landscape features that proved most important in the production of human-bear boundary maps.
Table 1.
Landscape covariates considered to influence habitat selection by Asiatic black bears in the central Japan Alps. 9 land cover types were reclassified (6 types of vegetation, 2 human-landscape classes and others) from a satellite image with 10 m resolution.
Table 2.
Comparison between distance-effect models using logistic regression with distance variables for each linear landscape features partly including interaction terms for seasons according to log-likelihood (LL), AIC, and AIC score as changes in AIC from the lowest model (Δi).
Table 3.
Differences between summer and autumn depending on changes of land cover types and sex in response to distances from open roads, forest roads, forest edges and rivers by Asiatic black bears in the central Japan Alps.
Figure 2.
Changes in probability of use by Asiatic black bears along with increasing distances from linear landscape features; forest edges (a), forest roads (b), open roads (c) and rivers (d) in distance effect models.
Dots represent the mean of probability at a distance, and error bars represent confidence intervals predicted in logistic regression as a function of the distance variables with interactions of land cover and season; summer (dashed line), autumn (continuous line), deciduous forest (green), red pine forest (red), and open regenerating lands (khaki).
Table 4.
The final set of variables selected through univariate analysis in mixed effect logistic regression for the global RSF model across season-sex groups of Asiatic black bears; numbers indicate the rank of 15 variables ordered in accordance with Wald statistics.
Figure 3.
Distribution of the boundaries between humans and Asiatic black bears in the central Japan Alps (10×10 m resolution).
The colors indicate sharp boundary: the overlapped edges of RSF class 9–10 and human lands (red) and moderate boundary: the overlapped edges of RSF class 7–8 and human lands (orange). The different panels show HB boundaries for females in summer (top left), females in autumn (top right), males in summer (bottom left) and males in autumn (bottom right).
Table 5.
Summary of human-bear (HB) boundaries for each sex-season group of Asiatic black bears in the central Japan Alps.