Abstract
We surveyed the habitat use of the Japanese squirrel, Sciurus lis, in a patchy woodland landscape to examine the effects of ecological factors such as vegetation, patch size, and connectivity on the Isawa Alluvial Fan in southwestern Iwate Prefecture. Field signs of the squirrel were found in 109 of 177 forest patches. We examined ten factors to determine the habitat of the squirrel: presence of walnut trees, presence of red pine trees, forest patch size, area of deciduous broadleaf forest within a forest patch, distance to the nearest forest patch, distance to nearest large forest patch (>10 ha), percentage of paddy field, dry field and developed area, and road length per hectare within a buffer surrounding the forest patch. Nine of these variables except percentage of developed area within buffer had significant correlations with habitat use or non-use by the squirrel. We used logistic regression to develop models to predict the use or non-use of forest patches by squirrels. In the best model, two variables were selected: presence of walnut trees, and area of deciduous broadleaf forest within forest patch, in order of importance. An additional field survey to validate the model showed a prediction accuracy rate of 75.9%.
