Modeling the Potential for Critical Habitat

Modeling useful habitat can be a daunting task, especially for territorial species. The classic approach is to develop a wildlife habitat relationship model (WHR) that can be used to predict the presence of a specific animal based upon the geographic distribution of needed habitat elements, which may vary with season and vary when they are raising offspring. For example, the State of California main-tains a geographic database that depicts the possible presence and suitability of 694 terrestrial vertebrates based upon the application of WHR models to geographic data. Conservation planners often estimate the carrying capacity of a habitat for a territorial species by first estimating the total area of suitable habitat and then divid-ing that estimate by the average size of a given territory. Such estimates are approx-imate at best given that suitable habitat is often distributed unevenly across a land-scape. This chapter presents an application of a location model as a means to gen-erate a more accurate estimate of the carrying capacity of a territorial species in the forests of California.

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