Farm and regional levels' database used to test the effectiveness of slope and distance from buildings in approximating the pastoral site-use intensity of alpine pastures

The excel file contains the two databases used in the paper “Slope and distance from buildings are easy-to-retrieve proxies for estimating livestock site-use intensity in alpine summer pastures” to test the effectiveness of slope and distance from buildings in approximating the pastoral site-use intensity of alpine pastures.

The database in the ‘farm level’ sheet has been used to assess if slope and distance from buildings were good predictors of site-use intensity at farm level, i.e. the number of GPS locations counted within sample units was modelled as a function of the two proxies. Moreover, this database has been used to evaluate if the expected transition of Vegetation Ecological Groups (VEGs) from the shrub-encroached to the nitrophilous ones corresponded to a real site-use intensity gradient as represented by the stocking rates measured through GPS locations, i.e. by modelling the total number of GPS locations within sample units in function VEGs.

The database in the ‘Regional level’ sheet has been used to evaluate if the five VEGs were effectively discriminated by distance from buildings and slope. Two models were performed by specifying either slope and distance from buildings as response variables and VEG as fixed factor.