Project Number: 5434-21630-002-08
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Dec 05, 2008
End Date: Dec 31, 2009

Objective:
The objective will be to characterize relationships between landscape variables and ungulate use. As opposed to quantifying use/nonuse of areas, which is something that has been done in previous analyses, our analysis will quantify the extent of land use by ungulates. Also, our analysis will account for correlation among spatially clustered habitats. Useful end products of the work will be Habitat Effectiveness Indices and Resource Selection Functions for cattle.

Approach:
The research site is the 25,000 acre Starkey Project site in northeastern Oregon where animal position data have been gathered since the mid-1980s. Basically, a large number of cattle are fitted with GPS collars each spring, and animal position data are gathered throughout the spring, summer and fall. In addition to animal data, biotic and abiotic data are available on 30-m ¿pixels¿ for the entire study area. The pixel data describe variables likely to be correlated with ungulate distributions such as distance to roads and water, vegetation type (e.g. weed invaded/not invaded), management (e.g. forest thinned/not thinned), slope, aspect, fire history, etc. We will be developing regression models that describe the degree of ungulate use as a function of these landscape variables.