Hudson Valley Habitat Management Decision Tree (for managing bird habitats):
Example Decision Tree

Determining the type of landscape surrounding your property: An example

In this example, MapQuest was used to view the area surrounding the property of interest, which is outlined in yellow in the image below. First, the nearest town or the address of the property was entered into the search fields on the "Maps" tab on the main MapQuest page. Second, "Aerial Map" was selected in the upper right corner of the map to show the satellite view. Third, the image was grabbed and dragged to move it so that the property was located and centered, and then the "+" and/or "-" buttons on the left of the image were clicked to zoom in or out to view the property and the surrounding "landscape" (remember that the landscape is defined as a 2,500-acre area surrounding the property). You can use the scale bar to help guide you to the correct sized landscape (i.e., approximately 1,000ha, 4mi2, 10km2; or a block measuring 2mi x 2mi, 3.2km x 3.2km, or 3200m x 3200m). In the image below, the map was zoomed to a scale of 800m, because the desired "landscape" is approximately 3,200m by 3,200m, and it was clear that at least four 800m scale bars would fit across the image in both the vertical and horizontal planes. At this point, it probably is easier to print the map and work on a paper version rather than on the computer screen. The fourth step is just a matter of using the scale bar to delineate the boundary of the "landscape", which is indicated by the dashed white line in the image below. The final step is to determine the percentage of the landscape occupied by forest by comparing the map to the dot images above. In this case, the forest (dark green areas) is between 50% and 70% of the landscape, with the remainder being farm fields (light green and brown areas). Therefore, this is an example of a Mixed Landscape.