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Mapping landscape connectivity for moose across the northeastern United States

Metadata Updated: July 20, 2024

Connectivity describes how well a landscape facilitates or impedes the movement of animals. Maximizing connectivity is a common management goal, especially for large mammals like moose (Alces americanus americanus) that occupy large home ranges and have the capacity to move long distances. Moose in the northeastern US (encompassing the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) represent a management priority and are expected to decline due to the near-term impacts of climate change and landscape development that will alter the distribution of habitats across the region. Large-scale maps of moose connectivity are unavailable but would provide an important resource for management planning to improve moose persistence in the landscape. We used an omnidirectional circuit-theory approach to model and map moose connectivity across the six states in the northeastern US. The approach involved integrating a distribution map developed from an occurrence model and a resistance map developed from expert opinion data, along with home range information and current landcover maps to depict expected movement flow. The data release includes 1 CSV file that contains expert-elicited responses regarding moose occurrence and resistence to movement. The release also includes 6 rasters (1 and 2) the Omniscape inputs files named "source.tif" and "resistance.tif"; (3) the connectivity raster using a 0-threshold "source" input named "cumulative_current_map_raw0.tif"; (4) the Omniscape connectivity raster using a 0.2-threshold "source" input named "cumulative_current_map_raw02.tif"; (5) and (6) the respective normalized connectivity rasters, named "normalized_map_crop0.tif" and "normalized_map_crop02.tif". The latter two rasters can be categorized into flow categories if desired: impeded (areas with less current than in a resistance-free landscape), diffuse (areas with as much current as a resistance-free landscape), intensified (areas with more current than a resistance-free landscape), and channelized (areas with much more current than a resistance-free landscape).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date July 20, 2024
Metadata Updated Date July 20, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/16d67eb5dab842f365323f94e48a7397
Identifier USGS:666893bdd34e9bcc607b7f39
Data Last Modified 20240708
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 6c7ee9b6-53fb-4860-83df-e7ba1476a0e1
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -73.6084,40.9799,-66.7969,47.4875
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 3f5b3fe840b635aa0d884ec99a12e18601a037838034cb7701753d7d8e9c67ab
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -73.6084, 40.9799, -73.6084, 47.4875, -66.7969, 47.4875, -66.7969, 40.9799, -73.6084, 40.9799}

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