Post on 14-Jan-2016
Playing Chicken at Muleshoe and Grulla National Wildlife Refuges
Mark Cancellare
Lesser Prairie-Chicken(Tympanuchus pallidicinctus)
Study Area
• 83 lek locations (2010-2012)
• 5 mile buffer
• Muleshoe and Grulla NWRs
Buffer Lek Locations
• 3.2 km buffer around each lek location
• 90% of all activity for a lek population
Random Locations
• 83 random locations generated
Buffer Random Locations
• 3.2 km buffer around each random location
Land Cover
• Land Use/Land Cover (LULC)
• National Land Cover Database (NLCD)
2011, 2001, 1992
AnalysisFRAGSTATS• Each 3.2 km buffer analyzed• Number of patches, mean patch size,
area of each class, total edge, edge density, mean patch edge, and other spatial statistics calculated
• t-Tests used to compare spatial statistics of lek locations to random locations
• 1992, 2001, and 2011 NLCD layers used to look at change over time
Increase Scale
• 10 mile buffer
• 83 new random locations
• 3.2 km buffer around each random location
Buffalo Lake NWR