Purpose

Our world is changing quickly. We need tools to track wildlife habitat that can keep up.

Wildfire, drought, timber harvest, and other disturbances are transforming landscapes around us. These changes often happen year after year, in succession, and in combination. This new reality creates challenges for natural resource managers: it is difficult to develop plans for conservation when we don’t understand the current conditions.

Traditionally, wildlife habitat mapping is a one-and-done effort. Scientists produce a map of habitat (also called a ‘species distribution model’), and this map is used for future conservation planning. But this approach only works if landscape conditions remain mostly static. In this new age of highly dynamic conditions, the traditional approach will yield maps that become quickly outdated.

Scientists at Rocky Mountain Research Station, in partnership with numerous collaborators, have developed an approach to produce near-real time wildlife habitat maps using the power of Google Earth Engine. We call these products ‘Living Maps’ because of their ability to stay up-to-date, as well as their flexible framework that can incorporate new input data and become more accurate over time. You can think of Living Maps as type of automated wildlife habitat monitoring system.

Living Maps offer a suite of benefits to both land managers and scientists. For land managers, Living Maps, and their associated web applications, offer up-to-date information on the distribution and quality of wildlife habitat for species of interest as well as the ability to generate report-ready information on habitat trends over time. For scientists, Living Maps provide a foundational long-term time-series of spatial data that can be used to analyze, for example, the effects of timber harvest or wildfire on wildlife habitat.

Approach

Photo Credit

Preston Keres

We begin with animal location data.

We build Living Maps from robust datasets of animal locations. Depending on the species, we obtain data from a variety of sources including demographic studies, species recovery planning efforts, surveys, monitoring, and opportunistic observations. We typically begin with hundreds or thousands of locations, run them through a quality-control filter, and use only the highest-quality animal location data to build the maps.

We link animal location data to habitat characteristics.

We identify potential high-quality animal habitat by tying animal locations to a suite of environmental geospatial layers. These layers typically include topographic, climatic, and vegetation information. Importantly, we heavily rely on unclassified multi-spectral reflectance metrics (e.g., from the Landsat or Sentinel-II satellite programs) and change detection algorithms that allow us to sense subtle changes to vegetation characteristics long time periods. Our models use machine learning algorithms that associate different environmental characteristics with these animal locations and tell us where on the landscape the most desirable characteristics are found.

Photo Credit

Ronan Hart

We assess habitat changes through space and time.

Using Google Earth Engine and archival satellite data, we can assess long-term trends in wildlife habitat, typically from the mid-1980s through the present day. This lets us understand how habitat has changed over time across a species range, which can help land managers plan how to conserve the highest-priority areas for each species in the future. We can also evaluate different habitat trends across spatial units of interest (e.g., a specific National Forest or other land ownership) that can allow us to understand finer-scale trends.

We update the maps as new data become available.

Thanks to an automated workflow and the power of Google Earth Engine, we can seamlessly update Living Maps as new data become available, and as the landscapes around us continue to change. Our objective is for Living Maps to reflect the scientific process itself: our understanding of wildlife habitat will continue to improve over time as we get new information.

Mexican spotted owls (MSO)

Purpose and background

The Mexican spotted owl (MSO; Strix occidentalis lucida) was listed as Threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1993. A key ingredient of species recovery outlined in the Mexican Spotted Owl Recovery Plan is that the species’ habitat must be stable or increasing over a 10-year period. The MSO Living Map allows managers to track progress towards delisting criteria across a portion of the owl’s range.

What we found

Across most National Forests in the southwestern United States, there is less MSO nesting/roosting habitat in 2020 than there was in the mid-1980s. In some forests, MSO nesting/roosting habitat is stable or increasing since the 2000s, but in others, habitat has continued to decline. Taken together, we see that habitat trends are not uniform across the region.

Considerations for interpretation

The Mexican spotted owl inhabits two somewhat distinct habitat types: forest and rocky canyonlands. The current version of the MSO Living Map focuses primarily on nesting/roosting habitat that occurs in forests. Future updates will extend the map to encompass the entire range of the owl (including Utah, Colorado, west Texas, and Mexico) and will further investigate habitat in canyonlands.

The living map for Mexican spotted owls

Please click this link to enter the application where you can visualize and compare changes in Mexican Spotted Owl habitat quality. Within the application, you can also visualize changes in habitat area over time.

California spotted owls (CSO)

Photo Credit

Gavin Jones

Purpose and background

In 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the California spotted owl (CSO; Strix occidentalis occidentalis) as a Threatened subspecies under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, primarily because of concerns about rapid habitat losses resulting from severe fire and droughts. This listing necessitates a better understanding of how the subspecies habitat has changed over time and what factors might be responsible for its decline. Understanding habitat trends might also guide the development of reasonable, data-driven delisting criteria.

What we found

This work is still in development. Results will be posted here as they become available.

Considerations for interpretation

This work is still in development. Results will be posted here as they become available.

The living map for California spotted owls

This work is still in development. The living map for California spotted owls will be  will be posted here when it is available.

Southern Sierra Nevada fishers

Photo Credit

Michael Schwartz

Purpose and background

In 2016, a team of scientists and managers published the Southern Sierra Nevada Fisher Conservation Strategy, a central component of which was a map showing the highest quality fisher habitat where conservation efforts could be focused. However, severe fires and a mega-drought in this region immediately rendered the habitat maps outdated. Partly because of these emerging threats, this distinct population segment was listed as Endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2020, and information on the current distribution of fisher habitat is urgently needed.

What we found

Photo Credit

Jody Tucker

We found that fisher reproductive habitat (places that appear to have conditions that support reproductive behaviors) was stable from 1985-2011, but then declined by nearly half (48%) between 2012 and 2022 because of drought and wildfire. Most of the habitat loss occurred inside of fire perimeters, where declines were linked to moderate- and high-severity fire. Reproductive habitat was more likely to burn at moderate- and high-severity than was expected by chance.

Considerations for interpretation

The southern Sierra Nevada fisher Living Map provides managers with updated information on the distribution of fisher potential reproductive habitat, as well as the potential drivers of that habitat change over time (wildfire and drought). There are other types of habitat that the map does not display, including foraging, denning, and resting habitat. This information will be used to develop an updated Conservation Strategy. 

The living map for southern Sierra Nevada fishers

Please click this link to enter the application where you can visualize and compare changes in southern Sierra Nevada fisher habitat quality. Within the application, you can also visualize changes in habitat area over time as well as changes in habitat quality both pre- and post-fire.

Caveats

Living Maps are subject to change. 

As new data become available, we will update Living Maps accordingly. If these new data are animal location data, it is possible that mapped areas of habitat will change as our predictive models improve. If these new data are simply new years of the environmental variables included in the model, then we will extend the model to cover the new years, leaving the previously-mapped years intact. We will provide versioning information for all maps to ensure they can be cited in management decisions.

Living Maps are only appropriate for certain purposes.

The primary purpose of these maps is to identify broad-scale and long-term trends in potential wildlife habitat. The maps are not intended to be used as a stand-alone tool for prescriptive planning, but may be used as a starting point to guide ground-based validation and could be used in combination with other products and local knowledge to identify recovery habitat on the landscape. Maps are fine-resolution (30-m) and have relatively high accuracy, but significant map prediction errors can still occur at fine scales. Please reach out to Dr. Gavin Jones if you have questions about how to interpret the information provided in Living Maps.
 

Future work

Addressing management needs

We work closely with our partners and collaborators to build Living Maps that are tailored to meet specific wildlife habitat monitoring needs. 
If you are interested in working with us to develop a Living Map for a species of interest, please reach out to Dr. Gavin Jones.

Living Maps currently in the works

We are in the process of developing Living Maps for several additional species, including marten, Canada lynx, and fishers in the northern Rockies; pinyon jay in the American Southwest; and barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. We will provide information about these tools on this website as they become available.