Characterizing woodland caribou habitat in sub-boreal and boreal forests

• Main Authors: Chris J. Johnson, Nancy D. Alex, Roger D. Wheate, Katherine L. Parker
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: Caribou; Landsat TM; Lichen; Supervised classification; British Columbia; Canada; Caribou Range; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.486.1907; http://web.unbc.ca/~johnsoch/Publications/Johnson et al 2003 characterizing woodland caribou habitat.pdf

Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are sensitive to changes in understory vegetation resulting from forest harvesting and are, therefore, of special concern for foresters and habitat biologists. Effective management of this species requires reliable habitat inventories which, because of the large heterogeneous areas over which caribou range, can be costly. We used Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and digital elevation data to identify 23 vegetative cover types across the 5100 km2 range of the Wolverine caribou herd of northcentral British Columbia, Canada. The classification was augmented with available geographical information system (GIS) data for a total of 27 cover types. We achieved an overall accuracy of 76.7% based on known ground samples; however, accuracy varied according to cover type. Considering the size of the study area, the procedure we employed was relatively cost effective and efficient. We discuss the advantages of such an approach for wildlife-habitat studies reliant on large-scale vegetation maps.