Abstract

Modeling Marbled Murrelet Habitat Using LIDAR-Derived Data in Southern Oregon
Track: Parks, Natural Reserves, Fisheries, and Wildlife Management
Authors: Patti Haggerty

LiDAR is a rapidly developing tool that captures fine-scale forest canopy characteristics that have been inaccessible by ground plot or other remote sensing methods. Fine vertical data can improve the characterization of habitat relationships for wildlife species known to be responsive to forest structure. The federally listed marbled murrelet is a robin sized seabird that nests in the upper canopy of large conifers. They are known to nest up to 100 kilometers inland from the sea. We used a high resolution (+/- 8 pulse/sq. meter) LiDAR data set to determine occupancy probability at the stand level for the marbled murrelet across 250,000 acres of forest in the Oregon Coast Range and generated predictive maps for this threatened species to guide habitat management. Preliminary results indicate that models with LiDAR-derived variables provided better discrimination between occupied and unoccupied stands than a model using regional TM derived land cover variables.