Simulated effects of forest management options on timber and caribou habitat in the Northern Columbia Mountains

• Main Authors: Assessing The Application, Andrew Fall, Don Morgan, Dave Daust, Karen Price
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Columbia Mountains; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.5.7604; http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hre/lach/pdf/land/lachm16.pdf

Introduction Mountain caribou, an ecotype of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), are a species at risk and so are a primary focus in forest management in the Columbia Mountains Forest District. Two multivariate habitat models have been developed based on telemetry data to predict caribou habitat by associating forest cover and physiographic variables at various spatial scales and seasons: one using logistic regression (Apps et al. 1998, 1999) and the other using the Mahalanobis distance statistic (Clark, 1993). Using a GIS, these models produce maps that can be used to classify the landscape into good, moderate, poor and non caribou habitat with relative certainty. Understanding the long-term consequences of management actions on caribou habitat is critical to develop forest management policies that minimize the risk to caribou populations while achieving other objectives such as timber extraction. Applying caribou habitat models in other spatial contexts (e.g. Golden Timbe