In many savannah regions of Africa, pronounced seasonal variability in rainfall results in wildlife being restricted to floodplains and other habitats adjacent to permanent surface water in the dry season. During the wet season, rainfall fills small‐scale, ephemeral water sources that allow wildlife to exploit forage and other resources far from permanent surface water. These water sources remain difficult to quantify, however, due to their small and ephemeral nature, and as a result are rarely included in quantitative studies of wildlife distribution, abundance, and movement. Our goal was to map ephemeral water in Bwabwata National Park in Namibia using two different approaches and to relate measures of ephemeral water to the abundance, distribution, and movement of two large wildlife species. We used high‐resolution Google Earth and Esri World imagery to visually identify waterholes. Additionally, we used Sentinel‐2 satellite imagery to map ephemeral water across the study area using the Normalized Difference Water Index. With these mapped waterhole layers and data from GPS‐collared individuals of African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African buffalo (Syncerus caffer), we evaluated the importance of ephemeral water in conditioning abundance and movement of these two species. The two approaches to mapping ephemeral water resulted in the visual identification of nearly 10,000 waterholes, and a predicted ephemeral water layer of ~76% accuracy. The inclusion of ephemeral water into models of abundance and movement resulted in improved goodness of fit relative to those without water, and water impacts on abundance and movement were among the strongest of all variables considered. The potential importance of ephemeral water in conditioning the movements and distributions of large herbivores in African savannahs has been difficult to quantify relative to vegetation drivers. Our results suggest research into ephemeral water impacts deserves more attention.

中文翻译：

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绘制和评估小型临时性水源对非洲季节性大草原中野生动植物的影响。

在非洲的许多热带稀树草原地区，降雨的明显季节性变化导致野生动植物只能在洪泛区和旱季与永久地表水相邻的其他栖息地居住。在雨季，降雨会填满小规模的临时性水源，使野生生物能够利用草料和其他资源远离永久性地表水。但是，由于这些水源小而短暂，这些水源仍然难以量化，因此很少将其用于野生动植物分布，丰度和运动的定量研究。我们的目标是使用两种不同的方法在纳米比亚的Bwabwata国家公园中绘制短暂水的图，并将短暂水的度量值与两种大型野生动植物物种的丰度，分布和运动联系起来。我们使用高分辨率的Google Earth和Esri World图像来视觉识别水坑。此外，我们使用了Sentinel-2卫星图像，使用归一化差异水指数绘制了整个研究区域中的短暂水。借助这些绘制的水坑层和来自非洲象的GPS领的个体的数据（非洲象非洲象）和非洲水牛（Syncerus caffer）），我们评估了短暂水在调节这两个物种的丰度和运动中的重要性。两种绘制临时水的方法可以直观地识别出近10,000个水坑，并且预测的临时水层的准确度约为76％。与没有水的模型相比，将短暂的水包含在丰富度和运动模型中可以提高拟合度，并且水对丰富度和运动的影响是所有考虑的变量中最强的。相对于植被驱动因素，难以量化短暂水对调节非洲大草原中大型草食动物的运动和分布的潜在重要性。我们的结果表明，对短暂水影响的研究值得更多关注。